Offbeat science: the secret to animal popularity on Instagram

The most popular Instagram photo of all time is that of an egg, “Liked” by more than 55 million people. But animals are also very popular with Internet users. The dog Pomeranian @jiffpom thus has 10.2 million subscribers, while the chat @nala_cat forward its adventures to 4.3 million followers.

But if these animals command attention with their daily adventures expertly orchestrated by their owner, what about wild animals? What makes an animal inherently photogenic? This question occupied two researchers at the University of Constance in Germany, who looked into the case of birds in a study published in the review of psychologie i-Perception.

Katja Thömmes and her colleague Gregor Hayn-Leichsenring examined 27,000 bird photos on nine accounts Instagram totaling 3.5 million subscribers. They developed an indicator called “photo aesthetic appeal” (IAA), which normalizes the absolute number of “likes”. ” The score is positive for images that receive more than “like” than expected given the exposure of the image to Internet users, and negative otherwise », Explains the study. The researchers thus classified 116 families of birds according to their IAA score.

It turns out that the aesthetic appeal of a photo has little to do with the conventional notion of beauty, the researchers observe. On the contrary, ” no more animal hasair unique or unusual, the more people are interested », Remarks Katja Thömmes. The Instagram star is the podarge, a bird nocturne assimilated to owl. « The podarge is unlike any other bird and presents anthropomorphic characters with its two large eyes on the face », Explains the researcher in the New York Times.

« Anything cute and evocative of human nature, especially big eyes, is shared a lot. », Confirms at the BBC wildlife photographer Graeme Purdy, who recently won second place at the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards and which is followed by 60,600 people on Instagram.

Admire my beautiful blue plumage

Among the other winners of this ranking are the colorful pigeons with decorative plumage or the emerald turaco which sports a shimmering blue dress and a huppe in crown.

More generally, blue plumage appears to be the most attractive, unlike yellow or red. A phenomenon that can be found in several other studies on landscapes, furniture or clothing, and which could be explained by an innate preference, associated in particular with the fact that blue « is linked to pleasant things such as clear skies and clean water, while potentially harmful objects such as rotten food are often yellow », Indicate the authors.

Seabirds, vultures and storks, unloved by Instagram

At the other end of the spectre, include the unloved sea birds (the oyster and the sandpiper), ” often caught eating worms and seashells “, as well as vultures and the cigognes, the latter being however generally considered sympathetic. ” This ranking shows that the attractiveness score is not necessarily linked to the beauty of the bird represented but rather to its behavior and the situational context. », Attest the authors. In other words, an ugly owl making a face will have every chance against a Flamingo resplendent.

An observation that the wildlife photographer regrets Graeme Purdy : « On Instagram, people generally like grown-ups felines and elephants, but if I post what I think is a great mongoose pic it won’t have any success », He laments on the BBC.

According to a site survey True Luxury Travel, a travel site offering safaris, the most popular animals on Instagram in number of hashtags are the dog, the cat, the horse and the hen (however with a bias because the photos also include the chicken recipes ). On the side of wild animals, we find the brown or white bear (thank you cuddly toys!), The puma (again with a bias because of the shoe brand), the Tiger, the lion, the monkey, the elephant, or the leopard.