Intro. A baby monkey named Punch has gone viral for his heartwarming search for companionship.
After being abandoned by his mother and rejected by the rest of the pride, keepers at the Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan gave Punch a stuffed orangutan to replace his mother. Videos of the monkey clinging to the toy went viral around the world But Punch's attachment to his inanimate companion isn't just the subject of a touching video. It also refers to the story of a famous series of psychological experiments conducted in the 1950s by American researcher Harry Harlow.
The findings from their experiments support many of the central tenets of attachment theory, which positions the bond between parent and child as crucial to child development.
What were Harlow's experiences? Harlow took newborn rhesus monkeys and separated them from their mothers. These monkeys were raised in an enclosure in which they had access to two surrogate "mothers".
One was a wire cage