A new star has taken up residence at Japan's Oga Aquarium GAO, located in Akita Prefecture. Momota, an eight-month-old polar bear cub, has become the star of memes and viral videos due to his endearing and utterly inexplicable affection for traffic cones.
Aquarium staff quickly discovered the cub's weakness and now deliberately provide him with colorful cones. What follows is pure improvisation: Momota places the cones on his head—he once set a record by managing to wear four at once—and proudly strides around his enclosure, seeing almost nothing.
He might swim with a cone as if it were an inflatable ring, chew on it like a pacifier, or drag an entire stack into his den—presumably for his personal collection. Onlookers by the glass barrier laugh until they cry, and these clumsy “cone fashion shows” spread rapidly across social media, gathering thousands of likes and views.
However, this spectacle has one stern critic. Momota's mother, Momo, clearly disapproves of her son's antics: each time Momota “dresses up” in a cone, she patiently removes it from his head. The internet instantly fell in love with this family duo. “All children are the same—both human and bear cubs. And mothers even more so,” users quip, watching the mother bear rescue her son for the hundredth time from what she clearly considers his beloved, yet useless, toy.
The secret to his widespread popularity is simple: everyone sees a bit of themselves in the cub with a cone on his head—a child who found absolute joy in the most unconventional of objects. There's no script or training involved—just the cub's pure, sincere joy and his mother's endless patience. It's precisely these kinds of moments that turn animals into meme stars: Momota has now joined the ranks of legendary cats and pandas who once took the internet by storm.
If your day isn't going well, remember Momota: metaphorically put a cone on your head and keep moving forward. And if “Mom” takes it off, just put it back on. After all, it's perseverance that makes a star.
