Just as the ancients believed the Earth stood on three whales, the Internet—literally from the early years of its existence—rests on three pillars, one of which is photos of cute cats and dogs. Even in the distant ’90s, when the technical possibility of uploading photos to the Internet only appeared, people never tired of admiring photos of our pets.
That’s why today’s selection is just another tribute to the worship of cute pets, where, probably every person, whether they love animals or not, will find a photo that puts them in ‘Aww’ mode. However, enough words—perhaps you didn’t come here for those!
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People love to depict animals—literally since ancient times. For example, some of the oldest and most outstanding works of prehistoric art, in the Altamira cave in northern Spain, date back to 20 thousand years ago. Now guess which images dominate the cave paintings on the walls of Altamira? That’s right, animals!
Some folks joke that the deer, bison, and mammoths depicted on the walls there are just a prototype of the later human tradition of posting photos of their food on Instagram, but we’re pretty sure that people simply liked to look at beautiful images of animals. Moreover, ancient artists even used the curves of the wall relief to create a 3D effect!
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Even though the art of the ancient Greek and Roman period was more devoted to the theme of depicting the human body, and in the Middle Ages people mainly painted biblical scenes, outside of Medieval Europe you can find many examples of beautiful pictures of animals. A classic example would be Chinese and Japanese painting.
Fish and octopuses, lions and tigers, mythical animals and, of course, kitties—this is just an incomplete list of animals that can be seen in ancient drawings of China and Japan. Ah, and the pandas, of course! So the vector of development of the world art and observation of the beauty of animals simply shifted geographically over the course of human history.
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Finally, with the advent of the Internet, people found the opportunity to completely devote the best hours of their lives to looking at cute cats and dogs, without being distracted by such less important tasks as work, friends, and others. But seriously, in these difficult times, when there is too much stress around, cute photos of pets simply give us a small but regular charge of dopamine to make our lives at least a bit better.
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