Revisiting 10 of our favorite cute highlights of 2025

Happy Monday, Watchers! 2025 certainly was… well, a year. I’m not calling it one for the history books, because I doubt many wish to remember it, but we did our best to counter this experience by providing you some weekly serotonin in the form of cute things. Let’s revisit some of our favorites from the past year.

Mars Attacks!

Mars Potato Jones (or Mars Attacks, if you’re listening to his song) from Tanganyika Wildlife Park soared into our hearts over the past six months with his extremely relatable antics. Mind you, he shared the spotlight when he was born with the Chester Zoo’s first snow leopard cub, Bheri, who are also absolutely precious. 10/10 flops of exhausted protest.

Quokkas

We head to Australia for our next critter highlight — the Quokka! Writer Rob Flanagan described these as “a creature that looks as though Jim Henson designed it himself” and frankly, no arguments. These house cat-sized marsupials stole our hearts with their perpetual, natural “smile” and stories of bakery raids. 10/10 cutest criminal.

Amur Leopard cubs

The Saint Louis Zoo’s Amur Leopard cubs (now named Vasilisa and Domovoi) were a highlight from the summer. Representing a big conservation win for this rare species, they were the second litter born to parents Dot and Samson under the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Amur Leopards Species Survival Plan (SSP). 10/10 rare fluffy babies.

Nashville Zoo’s baby boom

The Nashville Zoo was veritably bursting at the seams with babies by September! There was Gemma, the Clouded Leopard Cub, who is now romping around with her new bestie Meru; Shenzi and Ed, the brother and sister pair of aardwolf pups transferred from Mississippi who love to deliver camera boops; and their incredibly rare spotted fanaloka pup — Nashville is the only U.S. zoo to house them! 10/10 litter loves.

Ducks

The developers of World of Warcraft finally added precious ducks to the title with an amazing “tech unlock” in Dragonflight. Writer Eric O’Dea decided it was high time bring a cuteness comparison of Earth vs Azeroth to the table while reviewing some battle pet acquisition. 10/10 pinfeathers I want to pet.

Moo Deng’s first birthday

Despite our failures at rebranding to Pygmy Hippo Watch, it was still another celebrated year for the species at Cuteness HQ — the sassiest pygmy, Moo Deng, turned a year old in July. We also gave her a shoutout for World Hippo Day while highlighting some of the other 2024 pygmy hippo babies obscured by her sheer starpower. 10/10 keeper knee chomps.

Pallas’s Cats

We had a Cuteness community MVP this year — Discord member Kehl inspired a truly impressive number of cuteness posts with shared videos in our dedicated channel. This litter of Pallas’s Cats kittens (quite a mouthful) born to first-time mom Snezhinka at the Novosibirsk Zoo were just one of the many examples. We can’t get over their grumpy faces! 10/10 feline side-eyes.

Oceans of cute

Friends, this is one of the few times where I’m going to ask you to do this — just go look at Eric’s original post because it is full of cute ocean animals. The Flapjack Octopus is just one of the videos! There are also Sea Bunnies, Porcupinefish, and Green Sea Turtles to love (which are also rehabbed by the South Carolina Aquarium‘s Sea Turtle Care Center). 10/10 deep water darlings.

Malayan Tapir

We were positively bowled over with cuteness when the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium (PDZA) announced their new Malayan tapir calf, Ume, in February. This fuzzy collision between a watermelon and a newspaper is particularly special, as she was the PDZA’s second tapir baby in the last 120 years. 10/10 striped zoomies.

Fiona turns 8

Ending with our absolute preferred cuteness — writer Phil Ulrich led us in celebrating Fiona the hippo’s 8th birthday! We also recapped with eight years of Fiona (and friends) enjoying pumpkins as part of Cincinnati’s Hallzooween. 10/10 original hippo queen.

But these are just our highlights. We’ve shared a vast range of cute for your enjoyment that didn’t even get covered in our list, such as the Little Owl, Northern Sea Otter pups, rock hyrax, and more. And don’t get me started again on the beloved fauna of the WoW Player Housing neighborhoods — Founder’s Point (Alliance) and Razorwind Shores (Horde) — or the many battle pets we admired this past year.

We’ll see you again in 2026, with a fresh year of cute things ahead of us!