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Dear fellow doggos and puppers,
It is I, Charlie the #numerophile (clearly distinguishable from other associations such as Numberphile – no lawsuits, please!). And I have once again taken on the onerous task of deciphering the world of humans for you. In this article of The World of Dogs we have many tasty morsels for you. I have pawed through one of the sites that the humans seem to be obsessed with – WeRateDogs, on Twitter.
While their behaviour is once again questionable, and confusing – they think that they tweet on this site, but it looks nothing like tweeting, and certainly doesn’t sound anything like it, birds tweet, not humans, as evolved as they think they are, why do they want to be like birds, you know what birds are good for: chasing, that’s what, they humans ARE good for chasing, but they’re good for so many other things, like face liking, and snugs, and games of catch (remember, follow the ball with your eyes and not your heart…) But I see that I have digressed. What I actually wanted to say was that I’ve dug up some interesting facts for you, sniffed out the truth, and brought you some insights as good as a new bone to chew on. I have asked the tough questions:
- Are the humans loving us less?
- What types of dogs do they really love?
- Do the humans agree what makes a good dog?
- How well can they actually tell us apart?
As always my frens, I do this for you!
Yours in puparedness,
Charlie (the #numerophile)
As I have said many times, my frens, my job is to sniff around the tough questions. I’m sure, upon seeing this question, you can feel your shoulders drooping and your tail wagging a little less. But just like we need to meet a new dog from different angles, so it is with questions.
This chart certainly makes you wonder. Since the beginning of the records I dug up, this site, that is allow about humans following us has been losing the humans. Is this cause for concern? Well, some things to keep in mind, though this drop seems dramatic, the scale can be a bit deceptive. Yes, there has been a drop of around 200 hundred followers over approximately two years, but this is out of over almost 7 million!
I’m thinking we might be ok, but, never meet a dog from just one angle!
While the number of humans following us may have dropped, there is more than one way to skin this cat! (It is not the official position of “The World of Dogs” to support the skinning of cats) The humans can retweet (this “wanting to be a bird” business again...) or give it many hearts. The more the better!!
And see, my frens, they may not be as good as singing like birds, but their love for us, is growing – they have given us many hearts! So even if we do have a few less human followers, it seems the ones we do have, really love us a lot.
Again, so many cats, so little time. Hang on... ignore that last statement! But there are a couple of ways to look at this. First of all, what names do they give us? I think I was a little surprised at the result, but really, you all know that I am a popular fellow.
*ruff*No bribing was associated with the outcome of these results*ruff*
(And, just in case anyone tells you otherwise, "Bandit" is apparently no longer a stereotypical name for a dog.)
So we know what names they give us, but what types of dogs are most loved? Do the irrepressible puppers beat out the more stately doggos? Is it all about the floof? Based on the impressions of WeRateDogs here are the types of pictures the humans are sending in.
Is it really all just about age? Do the humans want to replace us for a smaller model?
The puppers get more pictures, hmm, but what does that really mean? Let’s check out what our human followers think.
This is why we always check the numbers, frens. More of the pictures of the puppers might get sent in, but if you really want the retweets and the hearts, what do you actually need? I’m telling you, it’s the hairdo! If you want the humans to be the most likely to give you the love, it seems that forgoing the clippers is the way to do it!
And, what we discover is that one version of the numbers might be deceiving, all of those pupper pictures, there’s a lot of them, but us folks who have a bit of “maturity” on our side, we seem to do even a bit better in comparison!
So we can see that the humans are probably gonna love us for a long time, but what about you? Maybe you’re feeling a bit down in the mouth. Maybe you don’t feel like you can strut the finest dog on your block. If you think you’re only 7 when your best fren’s a 13, what do you do?
And this is why, as well as you all, I have to say, that numbers are also my frens. Because this, is very good news! So maybe you’re not the top dog on the block, doesn’t mean you can’t find someone who will want to snug you! The humans kind of agree on the rankings that WeRateDogs hands out. Dogs with higher rankings do tend to get more of the retweets and the hearts. BUT! Look at the spread of the retweets and the spreads. Even lower ranked dogs can get just as much love as the highest ranked dogs.
So no matter who you are, I’m telling you, if you haven’t found them, there is a human out who is waiting to find a dog just like you!
You know how sometimes humans can look alike, but after awhile, if you can smell them, you can get to tell the difference? Well I wondered whether they felt the same about us – can the humans tell us apart?
And I will admit, this doesn’t quite give us the answer. But it seems like some of the humans fed our pictures into a machine – machines are hungry? – and it spat out some results.
Hmm, ok, so at first glance, this doesn’t look so promising. Sometimes on their best guess the machine was only 10% confident that it knew who we were. But, there are a lot of guesses that were close were in the 90% range, so let’s see what is actually going on. Here are three of their predictions and results.
Hang on, wha--
Squirrel!
*panting*Sorry, just had to deal with something important.*panting*
I was pleasantly surprised.
You can take a shot of the back of a fluffy pupper, or even stick a hat on us, and they can still work it out.
If this is what they can teach the machines what to do, maybe they really do know us!
(Might need to brush up on their squirrels though!)