Animals are popular on social media with more than 100 million posts with the hashtag #pets on Instagram alone! And now with the explosion of AI generated images online, we鈥檙e seeing a new wave of posts featuring animals across socials.
During the 2024 US election campaigns, AI images of cats and dogs swarmed social media in support of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, including images of cats with US flag hats and signs that read 鈥淐ats for Trump鈥 and 鈥淗arris 2024鈥.
Have you seen this video?
One animal that has garnered a lot of interest in the past few months is the Maine Coon cat. This video posted to TikTok has had more than 19 million views and thousands of people debating whether it was real or created using AI. The huge number of views for this clip isn鈥檛 entirely out of the ordinary for cats though as they always prove popular online, with the search for 鈥渂ig cats鈥 bringing up 1 billion videos on TikTok alone!
What is a Maine Coon cat?
Maine Coon is a large domestic breed of cat which originated in Maine, in the USA and is even the official cat for the state. In the UK, Maine Coon cats are the 4th most popular cat breed. Even rapper Megan Thee Stallion owns one!
How big do maine coon cats get?
The cats in the viral videos are pretty big, but if you do some background research you鈥檒l find out that the biggest ever Maine Coon was called Mymains Stewart Gilligan and he was 48.5 inches long. Often called 鈥榞entle giants鈥, Maine Coon cats reach their full size between 3-5 years old with the average male being 18-36 inches and the average female being 18-30 inches long. These massive moggies you see on TikTok appear well over the average size, and even the biggest ever recorded size, so not everything you see can be believed!
Why are cat videos so popular?
The AI Maine Coon cat video had high engagement rates, with questions in the comments about everything from how to feed such a humongous cat and if cats this size exist, where to get one. But why was it so popular? Videos of cats often go viral on social media as they appeal to a wide variety of people and are very relatable to pet owners. They can be comedic, cute, or even just look like your own furry friend. The more interactions you make with cat content on social media, the more you will see it on your fyp. This is because social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram use algorithms to suggest similar content to what you have previously engaged with or shared with friends.
What does a real video of a Maine Coon cat look like?
There are real versions of Maine Coon cats all over social media with Zeus the big cat (@zeus.maineconn.offical) having 4.1M likes on TikTok and a video of Kusa the Maine Coon (@through.the.lleaves) gaining over 165M views. Popular videos of these cats include owners documenting their growth over a period of time, as well as their daily routines.
How to spot AI images and videos on social media?
To try and spot if an image post is real or not, why not have a look on the account to see if their name or bio states that content coming from this account may be fake, or AI generated. Also, you can look out for hashtags in the caption such as #AI or #fakeimage. If you're still not sure, you can do a reverse image search of the image to try and find where the original image has come from.
TikTok and Instagram have both added a new feature which automatically tags posts as AI and allows creators to label content as AI generated so look out for that too!
Not sure if the news you鈥檙e seeing on social media is true or false? Can you always tell if the things you see online are real or fake? Learn how to get the other side of the story with our quizzes, videos and explainers.
