With his comical expressions and determination to squeeze in the tiniest of containers, Maru developed a loyal following. For a time, he held the record for the web’s most popular animal.
Maru the cat, who was once the most-viewed animal on the internet, passed away after a short battle with lung cancer.
The 18-year-old Scottish Fold was one of the first viral animal sensations on the video platform, and his videos have amassed a staggering 578 million views over the years. In 2017, Guinness World Records named him the most popular animal on the internet, lending credence to the joke that the internet was invented to share photos and videos of our feline overlords.
His name, which means “round” in Japanese, was an apt descriptor, and viewers found laughs and distraction while watching his antics. More often than not, his adventures included boxes and other containers he could barely fit in.
For Maru, the smaller the box, the bigger the challenge. Credit: Mugumogu/Youtube
Maru’s face was familiar even to people who weren’t big Youtube watchers, with internet users authoring several popular memes using his image over the years.
Maru’s human, who shared the bad news in a video, said she brought the little guy to the vet when his behavior changed and he stopped eating. His health rapidly deteriorated and he passed away on Sept. 6.
In one of his most-watched videos, the chonky Scottish Fold comically takes a tumble while trying to scale his cat tree, and demonstrates his dedication to laziness by laying on his back, half-heartedly batting his paws at a wand toy while his human tries to get him up.
In the video announcing Maru’s death, his human thanked his fans for being invested in his life for so many years.
“Maru was a laid-back and calm cat,” she wrote, “but at the very last moment he made a mad dash.”
Meet the Japanese macaques, also known as snow monkeys, living in an enclosure on the side of Mt. Takao, about an hour from Tokyo.
A note on this series: Although I published some of these photos earlier, the majority have been recovered from an old drive that took a circuitous route of more than five years, three continents and four countries to get back to me. I plan to run them in themed segments on Wednesdays this summer, including Tokyo nightlife, shrines, cityscapes and more. This week’s photos are from the snow monkey exhibit at Mt. Takao.
Japanese macaques are the northernmost-dwelling of any non-human primate species.
They’re built for the cold, with heavier coats than their cousins, the rhesus, long-tailed and bonnet macaques. They also sleep in well-organized groups, rotating so each monkey gets time in the center to soak up body heat, and they’re famous for keeping warm in northern Japan’s hot springs.
But as these photos show, snow monkeys are also adaptable, and they make the best of things during the hot, humid summers at Mt. Takao, about 51 km (30 miles) from Tokyo.
These photos were taken on a hot day in June when I was one of only a handful of visitors.
Welcome to Mount Takao! So you want to see snow monkeys?“The milk bar’s open!” Snow monkeys, aka Japanese macaques, are extremely attentive mothers. This baby is is about 8 to 10 weeks old and completely dependent on mom.“I’ve had my fill of milk, now it’s time to explore!”“But mom won’t let me go far! I’m too young to go off on my own, and mom is really protective of me.”“If I could…just…get away…for a sec!”“Come on, mom! Let me play!”A keeper at the Mt. Takao monkey enclosure. She has a hat…but not for long. Note the mischievous monkey on her shoulders, who’s waiting for just the right moment to grab her hat and run.The monkey on the left is like: “Oh crap, here it comes!”The keeper is staring daggers directly at me. There was a small crowd at the Mt. Takao snow monkey exhibit that day, and while the Hat Incident delighted the onlookers, the keeper was not amused when she saw me snapping away. I’m pretty sure she wanted to throttle me. Sorry!Yeah, she definitely hates me.Getting her hat back was not an easy task. The devious little monkey who made off with it immediately retreated into a small cave/shelter system big enough for the macaques, but too small for humans to enter. Making matters worse, there were at least four or five entrances and exits. Every time the keeper approached, the little monkey darted inside and popped up through a different hole, like a game of wack a mole. Eventually it took both keepers to retrieve the hat.“Oh, you know, just chillin’.”I was super close to this little lady. She was probably about two or three years old.Macaques live in troops of up to 300 members, and their societies are matrilinear, meaning an individual monkey’s “rank” in the troop’s social hierarchy is determined by who their mother is.
Macaque troops are headed by alphas who are the strongest males and deal directly with protecting troop members, but the matriarch runs most aspects of troop life.
Here, a snow monkey mom hugs her child. The bond between moms and their kids is strong. Daughters stay with their mothers and their troops for life, while sons remain in the troop until they’re about five years old, at which time they depart to avoid inbreeding. They often go on to live as bachelors in small groups before joining or starting their own troops.This baby is geckering. A gecker is a “loud, pulsed vocalization” usually described as a “broken, staccato noise.” People often think of it as a baby macaque throwing a temper tantrum, but it’s more than that, and it’s involuntary, meaning the babies can’t control it. In plain English, it’s a noise, accompanied by spasms and made by babies and young macaques when they’re particularly upset. Babies usually gecker when they’re separated from their mothers, being bullied by older monkeys, or in situations when they want to nurse but their moms won’t let them. Another mom with a young nursing baby. This baby is a bit older than the one above, probably about three months old.The first baby again. Notice how mom is grooming the baby. Grooming is an important aspect of macaque social relations, in addition to serving the practical function of clearing insects and other debris from fur.More social grooming. The monkey on the right is attentively picking insects from the fur of the monkey on the left.He’s big, he’s old, he’s battle-scarred. He’s the alpha, and he always gets groomed first, whenever he wants. He also eats first, enjoys the best lounging spots, and gets to mate with his choice of females. In the wild, alphas don’t retain their thrones long, often being deposed within a year or two. Extraordinary alphas who keep their troops in good stead and enjoy an aura of invincibility can last a decade or longer.Babies nurse for as many as two years and spend almost the entire first year of their lives holding onto their moms. That’s one reason why the practice of buying baby monkeys — or any monkeys — as pets is incredibly cruel, and it’s why pet monkeys are always seen clinging to stuffed animals. They’re taken from their mothers within hours or days, and they need the tactile comfort of holding onto — and being held by — their mothers.
Harry Harlowe’s infamous experiments in the 1960s proved that the physical comfort of being held is crucial to the psychological development of all primates, humans included. If a baby is denied that, the consequences manifest as severe psychological issues later in life.A male member of the troop. It’s not clear if this guy was brought in from another captive troop elsewhere in the country, or if he’s native to the Mt. Takao troop. If it’s the latter, at his age — about four or five years old, give or take — he’ll be expected to soon depart. Young males leave their troops to avoid inbreeding and potential violence as they become stronger and are viewed as potential rivals to the alpha and/or his lieutenants.
Scientists have uncovered the elusive mechanisms behind coat color expression, opening the door to a new question: is fur pigment connected to personality?
When Professor Hiroyuki Sasaki retired, he wasn’t done with science. He just wanted to use it to better understand his cats.
The Japanese geneticist raised more than $73,000 from Japanese and international cat lovers and put together a team, including partners from the US. Then he began the hard work of scrutinizing feline DNA to find out why some cats are orange, and why most all-orange cats are male while virtually all calico and tortoiseshell cats, whose coats have splotches of orange, are female.
It turns out there’s no genetic instruction telling the fur to take on an orange pigment — it’s the absence of a segment of DNA, which governs pigment production, that does it.
In other words, ginger cats are mutants.
Most fully-orange cats are male because the mutation removes the DNA segment in the X chromosome. As males have X and Y chromosomes, they only need the mutation in the single X chromosome for their coats to express in that shade.
Lots of cat lovers swear that coat color and temperament are connected.
Females have an XX chromosomal arrangement, so they need the mutation in both chromosomes to turn tangerine. If the mutation only shows up in one chromosome, you get patches of the color instead of a consistent coat.
That explains why 80 percent of ginger cats are male, and why only one in 3,000 calicos and tortoiseshells are male. A male cat would need an extra X chromosome, XXY, to be born with a calico or tortoiseshell coat. One of the side effects, however, is sterility.
Scientists estimate only one in a thousand male calicos/tortoiseshells can reproduce and pass their unique mutations on.
It’s not just coat color either. The mutation impacts skin and eye color, which is why a ginger cat might have a pink nose compared to the terracotta shade of a void cat or a silver tabby.
Are orange cats really more friendly and silly?
So how does this relate to temperament, and the many people who attest to a particular personality associated with orange cats? Some people say ginger tabbies are more loyal, affectionate and social than cats of other coat colors, but they’re also more prone to doing boneheaded things.
The stereotypes have picked up steam online, where people often share memes depicting orange felines as earnestly derpy, but they may be on to something — or at least, it can’t be ruled out until we know more.
Ginger cats are not the sharpest claw on the paw, according to popular memes.
Because of the missing piece of genetic code, a specific gene, ARHGAP36, isn’t “expressed.” Like so many genes, scientists don’t fully understand everything ARHGAP36 impacts, or how alterations can lead to unexpected changes elsewhere.
“Many cat owners swear by the idea that different coat colours and patterns are linked with different personalities,” Sasaki told the BBC. “There’s no scientific evidence for this yet, but it’s an intriguing idea and one I’d love to explore further.”
Buddy the Cat’s quest for world domination has moved into the realm of music. Listen to the new single here!
NEW YORK — Buddy the Cat made history as the first feline to top the charts in multiple genres this week with the release of “Move Your Ass” by The Buddies.
Listen to it here, but before you do, make room to get funky. (“And use proper headphones or speakers please!” Buddy says. “Don’t do us dirty by playing it through a phone or a laptop. You’ll miss all the bassy goodness that makes it funky!”)
The incredibly funktacular nu-disco track pays homage to the talented feline, who played guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion, while his human assisted him with certain particulars that required an opposable thumb.
“Obviously I could have done this on my own,” Buddy says, “but I like my human to feel like he’s involved in things, you know? Camaraderie and all that. But for future documentaries, ‘Behind the Music’ episodes and other retrospectives, it should be clear I’m the musical genius and the talent. The brains and the brawn, so to speak. Also the beauty. Obviously.”
“Move Your Ass” hit the top of Japan’s pop charts after an early release on Jan. 20 in that country, while it’s dominated the dance music charts in Luxembourg, the Principality of Sealand, Monaco and France. After its Jan. 30 release in the US and UK, it was steadily climbing the charts on Spotify and terrestrial radio.
Asked about his musical influences, Buddy waxed poetic about the funk, disco, French house and nu-disco he grew up listening to.
“From my earliest days of kittenhood, I remember Big Buddy playing Earth, Wind and Fire, Kool and the Gang, McFadden and Whitehead, The Brothers Johnson, Daft Punk, the Galactik Knights and Televisor. I love Televisor! I would dance around and joyfully smack my human on the head, then go hide in his shoes.”
Buddy’s already hard at work on his next single, which he promises “will be just as delicious as this one.”
More Americans say they can’t afford to keep their cats because of inflation, leading to an increase in surrendered and dumped cats in some places.
More than 110 years ago, American geneticist Clarence Cook Little developed a theory explaining why some cats have orange coloring and some don’t.
Now Little has been proven correct thanks to the work of separate teams in Japan and the US, which discovered the mechanism that leads to orange coloring, including fully ginger felines as well as calicos and tortoiseshells.
The explanation may be a bit too heavy on genetics for some readers, but essentially the researchers found the specific gene that leads to the growth or orange fur. They’ve known about the gene for a long time, but didn’t realize the totality of its function. Its official name is ARHGAP36, but for the sake of simplicity, scientists are calling it “the orange gene.”
“The orange gene has a known role in hair follicle development, but scientists didn’t previously know it is also involved in pigment production,” a team of geneticists and biotechnologists wrote in The Conversation, a science publication. “This means that a new pathway for pigment production has been discovered, opening the way for exciting and important research into a basic biological process.”
In partially orange cats like calicos and tortoiseshells, the blotches of color are the result of imperfect gene copies and a secondary pigment-related gene switching “on and off.” Credit: Mehmet Guzel/Pexels
Ginger cats are usually male, but the pigmant can also appear in female cats due to an error in gene copying which deletes one segment of the orange pigment-producing genetic code.
That’s why calicos and tortoiseshells have orange blotches or mixed orange fur. “[T]he orange gene is persistently switched on in orange areas but is mostly switched off in non-orange areas of a cat’s coat,” the authors wrote.
Are there more strays in 2024?
Time magazine has a story examining the problem of stray cats in America’s urban and suburban population centers, why it’s happening, and what can be done about it.
First, might as well get this out of the way: We don’t know if there are “more” cats. The claim that there are more relies on anecdotes, and there’s no hard data to back that up. You have to be highly motivated to invest the time and money into a proper census like the D.C. Cat Count, and it’s an understatement to say most towns and cities are either not willing to do that, or don’t have the resources.
What we do know is there may be more cats in certain areas, with individual shelters in some places reporting record numbers of surrenders and cats scooped up by animal control.
Rescuers say people who can’t afford food, supplies and veterinary care are surrendering or dumping their cats in larger numbers than in years past. Credit: Dou011fu Tunce/Pexels
The story quotes rescuers who say they’ve seen more surrendered pets, as well as data from Shelter Animals Count, which tallies self-reported information from shelters and rescues. The latter says 32 percent of cats taken in were owner surrenders in 2024, compared to 30.5 percent in 2019.
“It’s a combination of people surrendering their pets and people not adopting because they’re not sure they can take on the financial commitment,” Animal Care Centers of NYC’s Katy Hansen told Time.
Rescuers say that’s reflected in their experiences trapping the felines, who are friendly and acclimated to humans.
The people surrendering their pets cite inflation, not only impacting the cost of essentials like food and litter, but also more expensive veterinary care.
The story additionally includes this eye-popping detail:
“At Veterinary Care Group, a private equity-owned practice in Brooklyn, the cost of spaying or neutering a cat has soared to $850 per animal. By contrast, at the nonprofit veterinary clinic Zweigart recently founded in Brooklyn, the cost of spaying or neutering a cat is $225 and a mid-sized dog is $300.”
The lesson here: Steer well clear of veterinary clinics that aren’t vet-owned or are obtuse about their ownership. Private equity groups don’t buy clinics out of love for animals.
The cost of spay/neuter procedures ranges dramatically at different veterinary practices. Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko/Pexels
As for solutions to local spikes in stray populations, the story doesn’t offer any. It mentions TNR (trap, neuter, return) but only in the context of a lawsuit against the San Diego Humane Society for its neuter/vaccination program.
That said, there probably isn’t a one-size-fits-all technique. What works for a small town won’t necessarily work in a city, and there are dozens of factors that could influence the prevalence of stray cats and colonies. Still, city councils and town boards don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Chances are if they look, they’ll find a municipality similar to their own where locals have successfully stabilized feline populations.
As for the Buddies, I’d live in my car before giving Bud up. He wouldn’t be thrilled about that situation, and we’d have to head south because the winters here are brutal, but as long as Bud has his servant, he’s good.
A previous version of this post incorrectly described cat chromosomes. The story has been updated to remove the error.
Pain In The Bud 