Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey Eating Berries

Submission 33,434

Part of a series on Monkeys / Apes. [View Related Entries]

About

Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey Eating Berries refers to a viral video of a golden snub-nosed monkey accepting and eating handfuls of berries from a human. The video was uploaded to YouTube in early April 2021 and went viral on Twitter over the next few days as users shared it, often in posts joking about relating to the monkey and showering it with love.

Origin

On April 9th, 2021, YouTube^[1] page GOLDEN MONKEY, a page that shares footage of the endangered golden snub-nosed monkey, uploaded a video compiling various clips of the monkeys. In one clip, the camera operator feeds a particularly fat monkey, who is standing upright on a stone path, a few handfuls of berries, which he eagerly accepts and eats (shown below). The video gained over 13,000 views in four days.

Spread

On April 9th, 2021, Twitter^[2] user @CosyClub posted the isolated clip of the monkey eating berries with the caption, "monke fren," garnering over 159,000 likes and 28,000 retweets in four days (shown below).

Many commenters fell in love with the and related to the monkey, wanting to know more about it, namely its species. Twitter^[3] user @King_Hehehe commented that day, "To those asking in the comments, this looks like a very well-fed golden snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus roxellana), indigenous to central China!" garnering over 1,200 likes in four days. The video was shared numerous times over the course of the day.

Later that day, Twitter^[4] user @buitengebieden_ shared the same video with the caption "Nom nom nom.. 😅" garnering over 230,000 likes, 42,000 retweets, and 7.2 million views in the same span of time. A few hours later he commented on the tweet with another video of the monkeys eating, garnering over 314,000 views and 11,500 likes (shown below).

That night, Twitter^[5] user @zachsilberberg posted two screenshots from the video under the caption "if shes your girl why is she giving me little berries from her pocket" garnering over 225,000 likes and 22,000 retweets in four days (shown below, left). On April 10th, Twitter^[6] user @unlliterate tweeted, "would you dap him up?" with a screenshot of the monkey with its fist up, garnering over 232,000 likes and 16,300 retweets in three days (shown below, right).

Some users also compared the monkey to an Ewok from Star Wars. On that day, Comicbook.com^[10] posted a collection of the tweets.

On the same day, TikToker^[7] @yothisshitcrazy posted the clip with on-screen text reading, "Yo new monkey just dropped," garnering over 2 million views in three days (shown below).

On April 11th, Twitter^[8] user @gabesporata posted a painting of the monkey (shown below, left). On April 13th, Twitter^[9] user @VardanyanLia painted the monkey, calling it "monke frend," (shown below, right).

On April 14th, TikToker TooyMcNooty posted an animation of the monkey as a POV encounter in an RPG, garnering over 900,000 views in a month (shown below, left). On the 17th, they posted a "secret ending" to the animation, gaining over 1.9 million views in a comparable span of time (shown below, right).