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Sneezing Baby Panda

You might remember it as Sneezing Panda

Funniest videos on the internet17 of 30

2006·Early YouTube·cute

Sixteen seconds of an animal being startled, and one of the small handful of clips that taught the early internet what it wanted.

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At a glanceThe facts

Remembered as
Sneezing Panda
First known
2006
Format
Video
Era
Early YouTube
Origin
Origin not yet established
Available
Playable from the source

What this wasThe story

A mother panda eats bamboo at the Wolong breeding centre in China while her cub sleeps at her feet. The cub sneezes. The mother jumps, and goes back to the bamboo.

The whole thing is one beat of surprise, and it survives being watched again because the timing does not change. It was named one of the hundred most iconic internet videos in 2009 and one of YouTube’s fifty best by Time.

The footage is an excerpt from a 1999 documentary shot at Wolong by the Australian filmmakers Lesley Hammond and Jenny Walsh, uploaded seven years later. A 2014 feature-length documentary was built around trying to find it.

Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · a moment that changed what the internet did next · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later

The version shown here is a later copy, posted by the creator to YouTube.

Where it came fromWhat we know

Original source uncertain. This is the earliest copy currently known.

View the creator's copy on YouTube

No original upload has been established for this record. The index is showing the earliest copy it currently knows about, and says so rather than guessing.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

When
Originally published November 2006.

More from 2006You were there

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