Me at the Zoo was uploaded on 23 April 2005 by YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim and is recognised as the first video ever published on the platform. Filmed at the San Diego Zoo, it shows Karim talking briefly about elephants in front of their enclosure. The clip was shot by Yakov Lapitsky on a casual visit and was never intended as entertainment. As YouTube grew into a global platform, the video became a historical artefact, frequently replayed in documentaries, anniversaries and retrospectives about the birth of online video.