Sat, 28th Feb, 2026: Mark Nielsen, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Punch and his Plushie, Attachment Theory

Nevena and John talk to Mark Nielsen – Associate Professor, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Punch and his Plushie, Attachment Theory

A baby macaque monkey named Punch has gone viral for his heart-wrenching pursuit of companionship.

After being abandoned by his mother and rejected by the rest of his troop, his zookeepers at Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan provided Punch with an orangutan plushie as a stand-in mother. Videos of the monkey clinging to the toy have gone viral worldwide”

“But Punch’s attachment to his inanimate companion is not just the subject of a heartbreaking video. It also harks back to the story of a famous set of psychology experiments conducted in the 1950s by US researcher Harry Harlow.

The findings from his experiments underpin many of the central tenets of attachment theory, which positions the bond between parent and child as crucial in child development.

What were Harlow’s experiments?

Harlow took rhesus monkeys from birth, and removed them from their mothers. These monkeys were raised in an enclosure in which they had access to two surrogate “mothers”.

A viral monkey, his plushie, and a 70-year-old experiment: what Punch tells us about attachment theory

Mark joined the School of Psychology in 2002 as a UQ Postdoctoral Research Fellow after completing his PhD at La Trobe University. His research interests lie in a range of inter-related aspects of socio-cognitive development in young human children and non-human primates. His current research is primarily focused on charting the origins and development of human cultural cognition.

He is:

– Senior Research Associate, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
– a member of: Association for Psychological Science; Society for Research in Child Development; Australasian Human Development Association
– an Associate Editor: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology; PLoS ONE
0 an Editorial Consultant: Child Development; Developmental Science

The post Sat, 28th Feb, 2026: Mark Nielsen, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Punch and his Plushie, Attachment Theory appeared first on Saturday Magazine.