Animal Humors (stylized animalhumors) is a meme page found on Instagram that’s quite frankly just that—a meme page focused on sharing funny animal content in meme form.
As of this listicle, the page has a bit over 3,800 posts sent out into the internet ether since October of 2018. In that time, it has managed to bring together over 253,000 animal meme lovers.
The page features a variety of memes that range from goofy to innocent to hilariously ridiculous to flat out what is going on? while you laugh. And that’s across pictures as well as video.
Some of it is perfect timing, freezing the animals in a very comedic pose or facial expression with an elaborate plot line. Other times, it’s a tweet showing what happens when you share pics of your pets with your family and they resort to photoshop. Heck, even AI is beginning to hit the meme scene. With the help of people, of course.
While there is no factual research as to why animals make the perfect fit for memes, there are several speculations out there. This includes a popular theory that people melt at the mere sight of cats as they bear resemblance to babies, but also probably because the cat-lover community plays a huge part in it.
Digital culture expert Jamie Cohen told Bored Panda that memes are something that always greatly benefit from animals.
"... Especially ones with expressive faces or big eyes. Just as we humanize our pets, we can imagine ourselves or others in the meme. Having animals in a meme also makes it more evergreen and shareable over time. People often change or trends shift, but we'll always love animals."
Remember I Can Has Cheezburger? Remember LOLCats? Yeah, they used to be the big thing a decade or so ago.
It wasn’t long until dogs came along (natural progression), and then raccoons, and now pretty much every animal has a niche online. But what makes animals so memeable?
The temporary nature of trends (even more so online) allows for change and growth. And memes are no different. But just like the era of the LOLcat passed, are memes in general counting their last days too?
"There's an argument that we've already passed the peak meme era," elaborates Cohen. "Now, memes are so commonplace, they're almost part of language itself. Also, most memes today, in order to be creative, have to be packed with so much information and that makes them much more niche."
"The era of the wide scale meme that everyone sees is probably in our past, but that doesn't mean we can't still make them. I don't think we're exhausted by memes, but I definitely think the future of memes will be far more niche."
There's also another issue with animal memes. While it’s all seemingly fun and games—well, scrolling and smiles—not everything is quite all right with animal-based memes. One study suggests that social media contexts have an impact on how people view animals. And it can go both ways here.
In the study, 211 participants (49% women ages 18 to 44) were shown the same picture of a primate within the context of exotic pets to keep at home. The difference was that, randomly, some would see the picture with one of two narratives attached to it: either a negative one or a positive one.
The study was conclusive, though the results were limited and required further research. But there was enough evidence suggesting that the image with the negative narrative had an impact on their view of the animal—it seemed more stressed to them.
Furthermore, it also determined that people tend to moderate their discussions on human-animal interactions based on the social network they are in. Relationships, however, are very complex and thus require more study.
