People are going viral with 'pet fail' videos, but vets say the stunts could cause long-term damage to an animal's health
- For two decades, pet content has reigned supreme online — from cat memes to "pet fail" video compilations to dog TikToks racking up millions of views.
- While cat content has been largely associated with earlier internet humor, pet videos continue to rake in viewership, particularly in a new era of quarantine and social distancing.
- Some "pet fail" videos, however, show animals in obvious distress — and vets say these viral pranks may have harmful long-term impacts.
- Major online platforms explicitly ban animal cruelty, but "pet fails" rarely seem to violate platforms' guidelines.
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A YouTube video titled "Cats vs Cucumbers Compilation" has racked up over 15 million views since it was first posted by the Random Videos channel in 2015. In the 3-minute compilation, cat owners place cucumbers behind their unsuspecting pets and wait for a reaction. More often than not, the cats are frightened by the foreign object and retreat — occasionally becoming airborne in the process, much to the delight of laughing creators behind the camera. A scorecard keeps track of the cats and cucumbers' respective "wins" in the faceoff — and a buzzer sounds each time a cat emerges triumphant.
"Me: people are so cruel to their cats," one commenter wrote in response to the video. "Also me: where's a cucumber?"
The video is just one installment in a long history of people using animals in their attempts to go viral.
As Jason Eppink, Curator of the Museum of the Moving Image's 2015 exhibition "How Cats Took Over the Internet," articulated to The New York Times, cat content has developed a certain lore over the last two decades.
"People on the web are more likely to post a cat than another animal because it sort of perpetuates itself," he said. "It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."
This ethic explains the virtually endless cat content, from the LOLcats of the mid-2000s to the slightly more evolved "Caturday" posts.
But the history of cat videos has not been simply whimsical. As Netflix's "Don't F**k with Cats" documentary — which opened with an investigation into an infamous viral video in which a man tortures and kills two kittens — demonstrated, viral attention can come from more sinister content.
Far more common than shocking videos of animal torture, however, is the "pet fail" genre — hardly a sadistic display, but nonetheless entertainment at animals' expense. Popular videos feature cats falling into bathtubs, dogs getting stuck in their food bags after sneaking a snack, cats falling off tables, etc.
"Pet fail" videos are not just a feature of early viral content — the genre endures and continues to rake in millions of views.
A YouTube video titled "Cat Reaction to Sticky Tape - Funny Cat Tape Reaction Compilation" has amassed 345,000 views since it was posted to the WOW Animals channel in 2019. The five-minute compilation of TikTok clips — all from an account that seems to have been deleted — feature cat owners attaching tape to their pets' paws and observing the animals' reactions, usually lifting their paws and struggling to find balance.
The comments largely condemn the background music of the video — and one comment suggests getting "pet safe" sticky sheets for the prank.
The channel's owner did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
Pet prank videos are proving to be a staple of quarantine entertainment as well. One particular TikTok video, reposted to Twitter by lifestyle influencer Allyiah, has racked up over 10 million views in two weeks. In the clip, various cosmetics are placed on the floor in front of the creator's pets. While two cats nimbly navigate around the bottles, a golden retriever retreats before eventually stumbling over the items.
The video's creator did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
Vets say pet fail videos could be cause for concern.
Dr. Susan Krebsbach, a veterinarian affiliated with the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association, has three main concerns about "pet fail" videos.
The first issue, she says, is the possibility of immediate physical injury to the animals.
"I really worry about causing physical injury from these pranks to frighten animals," she told Insider, citing the potential for falls as an obvious risk.
The second issue, she says, is the potential long-term psychological damage.
Krebsbach, who runs an animal behavior counseling practice, says that fear — which is evident in the cats featured in the YouTube compilations and the golden retriever in the TikTok video — is an adaptive response that helps animals avoid dangerous situations. However, soliciting this response with common objects that a pet may regularly encounter in its environment can lead to "avoidant behaviors" — like cats constantly "hiding" or dogs remaining "constantly alert" and becoming easily startled. In more serious cases, she says, this fear can lead to instances of loss of bladder and bowel control in an animal.
"Anxiety affects virtually every system in the body," she said. "And, usually, a one-time incident [of trauma] probably wouldn't cause major issues, but it's possible. Sometimes it can be that an animal becomes so, so fearful of a particular object ."
The third issue, Krebsbach says, is the potential for long-term physical health problems related to stress.
Citing a 2010 study from the journal of Applied Animal Behavioral Science, she explained that fear and anxiety-related behaviors in pet dogs are likely to cause a physiological stress response, which is, in turn, related to a number of changes in hormonal and immune modulation. These changes have been shown in many species to be related to "disease processes" and shortened lifespan. Ultimately, the study predicted, dogs with fear and anxiety disorders were at risk for a decreased lifespan and increased disease frequency and severity.
Major social media platforms, like YouTube and TikTok, have policies banning animal cruelty — and most "pet fail" videos do not appear to violate such policies.
Animal abuse is explicitly banned on YouTube under its "violent or graphic content" policy — the platform prohibits content "where there is infliction of unnecessary suffering or harm deliberately causing an animal distress."
YouTube specifically cites "non-educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic content that shows unnecessary suffering" as subject to the policy.
A spokesperson for the platform told Insider that the "Cat vs Cucumbers Compilation" and the "Cat Reaction to Sticky Tape" videos did not violate its policies.
TikTok's Community Guidelines regarding "violent and graphic content" prohibit "depictions of animal cruelty."
"TikTok is a platform for creativity," a spokesperson for the app told Insider in a statement. "And while we encourage all users to express themselves, we trust them to follow our Community Guidelines to keep TikTok fun and welcoming for everyone."
While certain "pet fail" videos do not explicitly violate online platforms animal cruelty bans, vets say there are safer and more responsible ways to help your pet go viral.
Focusing on the positive and "cute" tasks that animals can do is a good place to start, according to Dr. Jaclyn Levin, an associate veterinarian at Arkle Veterinary Care in Smyrna, Georgia.
"I think there's a really fine line to walk here," she told Insider. "We should definitely have fun with our animals, and stimulating their brains to think through and get around obstacles is actually great — we love agility training — but they should be physically able to succeed in that process."
When it comes to making pet reaction videos, she says, learning "as much as you possibly can about dog or cat body language" is key.
"Once you know the cues of distress to look for, [you can] process with whatever you've come up with and STOP if your animal gets distressed," Levin explained.
An important step towards accountability and safety, she says, is being honest with your vet if a pet does get injured during the filming of a video.
"No one in that scenario intended harm and we know that," she explained. "We can fix the problem faster when we know what it is. We can also help you restore your bond of trust with your pet if it was damaged."
Ultimately, she says, creators should take advantage of all the inevitably funny moments that come about naturally, rather than setting their pets up for failure.
"Laugh with them not at them! They do so, so many precious and hilarious things all the time, there's no need to do all this to get something cute and funny for the internet."
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