{"id":46958,"date":"2026-06-25T04:30:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T04:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/46958\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T04:30:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T04:30:25","slug":"unacceptable-laser-pointer-aimed-at-punch-the-viral-baby-monkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/46958\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Unacceptable\u2019: Laser pointer aimed at Punch, the viral baby monkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Punch, the viral baby macaque, recently had a laser pointer aimed at him by a visitor, prompting his zookeepers to speak out about the harm such acts could cause to the animal.<\/p>\n

The Ichikawa City Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Chiba Prefecture said Thursday that it received a call the previous morning about a YouTube video posted within the past week showing someone shining a laser on Punch and around him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unacceptable,\u201d said Takashi Yasunaga, who is in charge of the city\u2019s zoo division.<\/p>\n

Pointing a laser at a monkey or other animal will cause it a great amount of stress, Yasunaga said, adding that it could also result in blindness if aimed at the eyes for a long period of time.<\/p>\n

Anyone caught engaging in such behavior will be expelled from the zoo immediately, he said.<\/p>\n

Zoo officials said no harm has come to Punch and the other monkeys. As a precaution, security guards are patrolling the area, they said.<\/p>\n

The incident follows a case in May in which two Americans were arrested<\/a>\u00a0after one of them entered the monkey enclosure while the other one recorded a video.<\/p>\n

Punch, who was abandoned by his mother, became a social media sensation earlier this year after visitors shared videos of him wandering his enclosure clutching a stuffed orangutan toy to cope with loneliness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Punch, the viral baby macaque, recently had a laser pointer aimed at him by a visitor, prompting his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2173,15732,8,19504,19417],"class_list":["post-46958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-animal-welfare","tag-ichikawa-city-zoo","tag-japan","tag-monkeys","tag-punch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}