Baby Shark
Doo doo doo. The song that conquered YouTube — and inspired a TNT student’s p5.js animation.
About the Song — History, Pinkfong, and the 13-Billion-View Phenomenon
“Baby Shark” began as a children’s campfire song — one of those hand-motion songs that generations of camp counselors taught to very small humans at the edge of lakes. Its origin is genuinely murky; variations appear in multiple countries, and no single author has ever been established. What is not murky is what happened next.
In November 2015, Pinkfong (SmartStudy), a South Korean educational entertainment company, recorded their own version of the song and released it on YouTube. It featured a cartoon Baby Shark, cheerful animation, and the now-iconic hook: “Baby Shark, doo doo doo” — repeated by a Mama Shark, Daddy Shark, and Grandma and Grandpa Shark in turn. The video was re-released in 2016 and began its slow climb to dominance.
By 2020, the official Pinkfong video had surpassed Despacito to become the most-viewed YouTube video of all time. As of 2026, it has accumulated over 13 billion views — a number so large it is difficult to contextualize. For reference, there are about 8 billion people on Earth. The “doo doo doo” has been heard, on average, more than once by every living human.
The video’s viral spread is partly explained by its audience: toddlers do not watch a video once. They watch it on loop, indefinitely, until a parent quietly closes the browser. The engagement patterns that drive YouTube’s recommendation algorithm were essentially purpose-built by a two-year-old with an iPad. The song is also legitimately catchy, with a hook structure — call and response, escalating family members, predictable rhythm — that aligns perfectly with how young brains process and retain music.
The TNT Connection — Why This Song Lives Here
Ethan, a student in TNT’s CS Innovations Studio, chose “Baby Shark” as the inspiration for his p5.js Animate a Song project. The result is a front-facing cartoon shark with a pulsing ocean background, 15 rising bubbles, an animated mouth that opens and closes on a sine wave, and the lyric “Baby Shark, doo doo doo!” rendered in white at the top of the canvas.
Ethan’s sketch lives in TNT Tool Time: AI Edition — the venue where novice code gets improved through deliberate AI prompting. His original, working sketch is showcased alongside a live canvas. Visitors copy the code, run it in the p5.js editor, and use the S.P.A.R.K. method and C.R.A.F.T. framework to make it better. The song is the reason the shark exists, and now the shark is the reason this clip page exists.
Watch the original music video below. Then visit Ethan’s page, copy the code, and ask yourself: what would you add? A Mama Shark? An audio-reactive mouth? A day/night cycle? The original song has 13 billion views. Ethan’s sketch is just getting started.
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