Hear-no-evil Monkey Emoji

A brown monkey face with both hands pressed over its ears. This is Kikazaru, the second of the Three Wise Monkeys, and the one people use the least. While 🙈 gets sent to express shy embarrassment and 🙊 covers the mouth after saying too much, 🙉 fills a more specific niche: "I don't want to hear this," "la la la, I can't hear you," or "please stop talking."

That specificity is why it's less popular. Visual embarrassment (can't look) and verbal regret (shouldn't have said that) come up constantly in texting. Auditory avoidance is rarer. You need a situation where someone is telling you something you'd rather not know, or where you're deliberately blocking out information. That makes 🙉 the most intentional of the three: where 🙈 hides reflexively and 🙊 slips up accidentally, 🙉 makes a conscious choice to stop listening.

Dictionary.com notes that all three wise monkey emoji "enjoy popularity because monkeys are cute, and the covering of one's ears or mouth has a way of conveying a feeling with few words: embarrassment, surprise, self-deprecation, questioning, and 'la la la, I can't hear you!'" That last one is 🙉's territory. It's the emoji of selective deafness, of choosing what you let in.

On social media, 🙉 shows up in three main contexts. First, reacting to information you wish you didn't have: "My parents are going on a 'romantic getaway' 🙉" or "Just found out my coworker's salary 🙉." Second, performative refusal to listen: "I don't want to hear about your ex anymore 🙉" or "No spoilers 🙉🙉🙉." Third, and most commonly, as part of the full trio 🙈🙉🙊 for comprehensive avoidance.

The trio usage is worth noting because 🙉 gets most of its airtime as the middle character in 🙈🙉🙊 rather than standing alone. Emojicombos.com lists the three-monkey sequence as the dominant combo. It's like the middle sibling who gets included in the family photo but rarely gets a solo portrait.

In 2016, Twitter user @jonnysun sparked a viral debate with a poll asking whether 🙈🙉🙊 represent one monkey showing three expressions or three separate monkeys. Over 150,000 people voted, with 52% saying one monkey. NPR covered it. The correct answer, historically, is three separate monkeys with different names (Mizaru, Kikazaru, Iwazaru), but jonnysun himself sided with the one-monkey camp, arguing that "despite the mythological origins... it doesn't square with the way people use emoji in practice."

🙉 is Kikazaru (聞かざる, "hear not"), the second of the Three Wise Monkeys. The full backstory of how Chinese philosophy became Japanese monkeys through a pun is told on the 🙈 page, but here's the short version: Confucius (~500 BCE) taught four negations about propriety. Buddhist monks carried them to Japan. In Japanese, the negative suffix "-zaru" (not) sounds like "saru" (monkey), so a philosophical teaching became three monkeys purely because of a homophone.

Kikazaru specifically represents "listen not to what is contrary to propriety." Of the three monkeys, Kikazaru's lesson is arguably the hardest to practice in 2026. Mizaru's "see not" requires looking away. Iwazaru's "speak not" requires staying quiet. But Kikazaru's "hear not" requires you to actively block incoming information. You can close your eyes and shut your mouth, but you can't close your ears. The act of covering them with your hands is uniquely desperate, and that desperation is what makes 🙉 funnier than the other two in certain contexts.

The most famous depiction is panel 2 of the eight-panel monkey carving at the Tōshō-gū Shrine in Nikkō, Japan, carved by Hidari Jingoro in 1636. Kikazaru sits in the middle of the three, between Mizaru (eyes) and Iwazaru (mouth). In most vendor emoji designs, the hear-no-evil monkey looks slightly upward with a mild expression of concern or determination, as if actively straining to keep sound out.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F649U+1F649 HEAR-NO-EVIL MONKEY. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Part of a trio with 🙈 See-No-Evil Monkey (U+1F648U+1F648) and 🙊 Speak-No-Evil Monkey (U+1F64AU+1F64A), all approved in the same batch. The three occupy consecutive Unicode codepoints (U+1F648U+1F648, U+1F649U+1F649, U+1F64AU+1F64A), deliberately grouped together. The design references the Three Wise Monkeys (三猿, sanzaru), specifically Kikazaru (聞かざる), the one who hears not.

1. -500Confucius's Analects include "listen not to what is contrary to propriety" among four negations
2. 800Buddhist monks bring the three negations teaching to Japan, where Kikazaru (hear-not/hear-monkey) emerges from the -zaru/-saru pun
3. 1636Hidari Jingoro carves Kikazaru in the center of the Three Wise Monkeys panel at Tōshō-gū Shrine, Nikkō↗
4. 1868Meiji era exports the Three Wise Monkeys image to the West. "Hear no evil" enters English as part of the proverb
5. 2010Unicode 6.0 approves 🙉 (U+1F649) alongside 🙈 and 🙊 as a trio↗
6. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0. All major platforms render 🙉 as a brown monkey with hands on ears
7. 2016@jonnysun's Twitter poll asking if 🙈🙉🙊 are one monkey or three goes viral with 150K+ votes↗

The Three Wise Monkeys carry opposite meanings depending on where you are. In Japan and East Asian Buddhist traditions, Kikazaru represents moral discipline: choosing not to listen to gossip, slander, or harmful speech. It's an aspirational ideal. Don't let bad words into your mind.

In the West, "hear no evil" became an accusation. Saying someone "hears no evil" means they're deliberately ignoring wrongdoing, not that they're morally disciplined. A politician who "hears no evil" is covering up, not meditating. When you send 🙉 in a text, you're almost always using the Western version: blocking out something specific you don't want to process.

In India, the Three Wise Monkeys carry extra cultural weight thanks to Mahatma Gandhi, who kept a small statue of them as one of his few possessions. He named them Bapu, Ketan, and Bandar. Gandhi interpreted them in the Eastern sense: positive moral discipline, not avoidance. Indian schoolchildren learn about "Gandhiji ke teen bandar" (Gandhi's three monkeys) as symbols of ethical living.

There's a serious dimension to all three monkey emojis. Emojipedia published a detailed analysis of how monkey emojis have been weaponized for racial harassment, particularly against Black athletes after England's Euro 2020 loss. Instagram initially failed to flag monkey emojis as violating terms of service even when used in clearly racist contexts. The Meta Oversight Board ruled in 2025 that monkey emojis directed at Black individuals constitute hateful conduct. The emojis themselves reference a 2,500-year-old Japanese philosophical concept. The problem isn't the symbol, it's the people misusing it.

• •🙉 is named Kikazaru (聞かざる), which means both "hear not" and "hear-monkey" in Japanese. The pun that created all three monkeys works because the negative suffix "-zaru" (not) sounds exactly like "saru" (monkey) in compounds.
• •In the 1636 Tōshō-gū carving, Kikazaru sits in the center of the Three Wise Monkeys panel, between Mizaru (eyes) and Iwazaru (mouth). The center position wasn't accidental: in Japanese Buddhist teaching, what you allow yourself to hear shapes what you see and say.
• •Mahatma Gandhi kept a small Three Wise Monkeys statue as one of his few personal possessions. He named them Bapu, Ketan, and Bandar. The statue was a gift from Japanese monk Nichidatsu Fujii.
• •Over 150,000 people voted in @jonnysun's 2016 Twitter poll about whether 🙈🙉🙊 are one monkey or three. 52% said one. The correct historical answer is three. NPR wrote it up as "The Case Of The 3 Monkeys Is Tearing Twitter In Two."
• •Of the three wise monkey emojis, 🙉 is the least used. This makes sense: texting is visual, not auditory. You read messages, you don't hear them. Covering your eyes (🙈) maps naturally to "I can't look at what I just sent." Covering your ears requires a more specific scenario.
• •In the original Confucian teaching, the "hear" negation was: "Listen not to what is contrary to propriety." In 2026, that advice might be the most relevant of the four. The other three (don't look, don't speak, don't act improperly) involve self-restraint. Not listening requires filtering an entire world of incoming noise.

• •People sometimes use 🙉 when they mean 🙈 (covering eyes, not ears). The monkeys look similar at small sizes on some platforms, and both express avoidance. But the distinction matters: 🙈 is about what you see, 🙉 is about what you hear. If you just did something embarrassing, 🙈 is correct. If someone just told you something you wish they hadn't, 🙉 is correct.
• •Like all monkey emojis, 🙉 has been documented as a tool for racial harassment. The emoji itself references a 2,500-year-old Japanese philosophical concept, but context determines meaning. Be mindful of who you're sending it to.
• •"Hear no evil" in Western usage has become negative: it implies you're deliberately ignoring wrongdoing. But in the original Eastern tradition, it means actively choosing not to consume harmful speech. Don't assume someone using 🙉 is being morally negligent; they might just not want spoilers.

• •In Planet of the Apes (1968)), a chimpanzee tribunal enacts the three wise monkeys pose during a courtroom scene: one covers eyes, one covers ears, one covers mouth. It's one of the earliest explicit Three Wise Monkeys references in Western cinema.
• •The NPR article "The Case Of The 3 Monkeys Is Tearing Twitter In Two" turned @jonnysun's 2016 poll into national news, making it probably the only time 🙉 has been covered by a major news outlet on its own merits.
• •Gandhi's Three Wise Monkeys statue is displayed at the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, India. The ashram receives millions of visitors, making this statue one of the most-seen Three Wise Monkeys depictions in the world.

• •🙉 is U+1F649U+1F649. It's a standalone character with no variation selectors or ZWJ sequences. Part of a consecutive trio: U+1F648U+1F648 (🙈), U+1F649U+1F649 (🙉), U+1F64AU+1F64A (🙊).
• •Common shortcodes: :hear_no_evil::hear_no_evil: (GitHub, Slack, Discord). In Slack's emoji picker, searching "monkey" returns all five monkey emojis; searching "hear" narrows to 🙉.
• •If building emoji analytics, consider tracking 🙈🙉🙊 as a sequence. 🙉 appears solo less frequently than as part of the trio, which affects standalone frequency counts.

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