Punch the Monkey Walked Upright in the Rain. One Theory Fell Apart

Punch the baby monkey walked upright in the rain at a small zoo in Japan, and a fan channel only showed six seconds of it. I watched the whole 31 minutes to find out why he stood up. On November 5, a fan channel put this on screen: "Don't miss Punch walking on his two hind legs." The channel says it's Punch. The walk lasts six seconds and I counted seven steps, then the eighth goes behind a post. Macaques normally walk on four legs, but they can stand and take a few steps on two. How long can one keep that up? I looked and found no number. So I tried four guesses. Guess 1: dry hands. A gorilla named Louis at the Philadelphia Zoo got famous for walking upright, and the zoo said it was hands full of food or a muddy floor. Even his curator called the clean-hands idea "a little anthropomorphic." It was raining here too. But in the same rain, a little monkey spent about 50 seconds lying against a wet wall, belly on it, arms on it. That crossed this one out. It's my read, not science. Guess 2: full hands. A 2012 study of chimps at Bossou found they walked on two legs more when carrying food. Here, one hand keeps going back up to his mouth and I can't see anything in the other. Meanwhile, monkeys with full hands in this footage just sat down. So, a maybe. Guess 3: standing up to see farther. Researchers have written about baboons standing to keep watch. Near the end the channel teases "an unexpected visitor," a big monkey walks through, and the little one stands on two legs with one hand out, still holding something yellow. This one I believe, at least for that moment. Guess 4: no reason at all. The channel's title promises a "mystery dancing monkey." The closest thing I found was a hand on the wall, a stand, and a stare at the camera. A dance? I'd say no. I can't cross this one out, and I can't prove it either. The cases I can find of monkeys walking on two legs come with a reason. Natasha, a macaque near Tel Aviv in 2004, started after a serious illness, so she's not a model for Punch. Japan's sarumawashi monkeys are trained to walk on two legs, and a 2004 study of two of them found they burned 20 to 30 percent more energy than on four. Only two monkeys, but that's the number I have. Nobody I can find taught Punch this. I can't read a monkey's mind, so I won't tell you why he did it. Maybe his hands were busy. Maybe something caught his eye. We can't know. We love it when animals look like us, and scientists call that anthropomorphism. He isn't turning into us. We're the ones who stop and stare. I only call a monkey Punch where a channel's caption, label or arrow says so. Everywhere else it's "the big one" or "a little one." This is a fan-made video, not an official zoo update. 0:00 Six seconds 0:21 The teaser 0:32 The six seconds 1:13 31 minutes 1:51 Guess 1: dry hands 3:11 Guess 2: full hands 4:26 Guess 3: looking 5:04 Guess 4: just because 6:00 Who really walked on two legs 6:48 My take We love Punch and deeply respect the keepers at Ichikawa City Zoo, a small local zoo doing its best for its animals every day. Did you catch him doing it again? Tell me below, I'll count the steps 🧡 #PunchMonkey #JapaneseMacaque #MonkeyBehavior #animals