Pedro Raccoon

Origin

‘Pedro Raccoon’ is a short clip of a baby raccoon spinning on the spot. The original is a TikTok posted in late September 2023, at which point it was simply a cute animal video with no music attached.

It became a meme six months later, when sound was added. On March 8th, 2024, the TikTok user @malykha2114 used the raccoon in a post about their car’s sound system, laying an EDM remix of ‘Pedro’ by the Italian singer Raffaella Carrà over it. That upload took 926,000 views and 71,300 likes in a month. The whole joke is that the raccoon’s rotation happens to match the remix’s tempo, so it looks like dancing — and the name Pedro comes from the song, not the animal.

Spread

After exploding on TikTok in late March 2024, it moved to YouTube and Instagram. A short loop under a repeating hook suits places that need to keep running — wallpapers, loading screens, standby screens — and it was widely used exactly that way.

Its closest structural precedent is CatJAM. Like that clip of a cat bobbing its head in time, Pedro Raccoon belongs to the family of animal loops that appear to be moving to music.

Usage

• A reaction video for being delighted about something
• Background and standby screens looping the same few seconds
• An editing game: lay any track over it and see if the beat lines up

With no dialogue and no context it travels across every language. One side effect is that the original song, released in 1980, found a new audience through the meme.

Sources

• Know Your Meme, ‘Raccoon Dancing in a Circle / Pedro Pedro Pedro’ — the late-September 2023 TikTok original; @malykha2114’s March 8th, 2024 pairing with the Raffaella Carrà ‘Pedro’ EDM remix (926,000 views, 71,300 likes in a month); the late-March 2024 virality; the CatJAM comparison
• Know Your Meme explainer, ‘Where Did The Video Of The Raccoon Dancing To Pedro In A Circle Come From?’ — the source of the clip and how it spread
• Know Your Meme video entry, ‘Raccoon Dancing to Pedro’ — the clip as it circulates