The very first video ever uploaded to YouTube, ‘Me at the zoo,’ is now on display at The Victoria and Albert Museum in London to honor its contribution to internet culture.
‘Me at the zoo’ was uploaded to YouTube on April 23, 2005, showing YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim in front of an elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo.
In the twenty years since it made its debut, the video has garnered over 382 million views, as well as an endearing reputation among users for being the very first upload on the platform.
‘Me at the zoo’ is an indelible cornerstone of internet history, and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum is honoring the famous 19-second clip in a big way.
Victoria and Albert Museum acquires YouTube’s ‘Me at the zoo’
Revealed on February 18, 2026, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is now displaying a reconstruction of what ‘Me at the zoo’ looked like on 2005-era YouTube.
It’s a shocking difference from what the website looks like today, complete with a glaring white background, a star-based rating system, and a chunky description box in the upper right-hand corner.
The V&A Museum acquired the video and its vintage view page to help “preserve and document the history and culture of the internet,” as told by YouTube in an official blog post.
YouTube’s recreation of what ‘Me at the zoo’ looked like on its website in 2006.
YouTube worked with its own UX developers and interaction design studio oio to faithfully recreate the platform’s old-school appearance for the exhibit. A behind-the-scenes look at this recreation is also available for visitors at the museum’s V&A East Storehouse.
‘Me at the zoo’ can be viewed in Design 1900–Now gallery at the V&A South Kensington.
This isn’t the first time YouTube has called back to its very first video as of late; in April 2025, the website honored the upload by replacing the scroll button with a cake, something it only did for its most popular and iconic videos in celebration of its 20th anniversary.
