Sneezing Baby Panda
You might remember it as Sneezing Panda
Watch now26 of 60
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
- 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
SourcesWhat was read
- Bulletin des Nouvelles Archives du Muséum (1869)
- Futura - Sciences
- Know Your Meme — Sneezing Baby Panda
- Wikipedia — Giant panda
What this page says about it was written from these sources. How ViralWorld documents things