Headline, March 16 2025/ ''' PETS TV PEEP '''

''' PETS TV PEEP '''

TV : IT'S NO LONGER JUST FOR HUMANS. VIDEOS aimed at pets draw millions of rapt viewers -many of them with four feet. So, show me your YouTube watch history, and I will tell you who you are.

The most-viewed video in our apartment is a more curious artifact : footage of a strand of yarn being dragged across the screen. The video, created by the YouTube channel TV BINI, lasts over an hour and is scored with recordings of birdsong. Its devoted viewer ? Our 2-year-old cat Goose.

Once upon a time, back in those young, halcyon days of the internet, cats were the stars of social media, muses for early memes and viral videos. Over the last two decades, however, we have progressed from making videos of cats [ still a popular pursuit, of course ] to making videos for them.

YouTube alone offers more content than my own three pets - two cats and a dog - could watch in a lifetime : videos of squeaky toys and squirrels, animated fish and feathered balls, eight hours of British birds and 21 hours of puppies playing.

Roku users can download apps like '' Happy Dog TV '' and '' Relax My Cat''. And DOGTV, a television channel and streaming service, has cinematographers who shoot original canine content in more than 20 countries, said Ron Levi, the company's founder and chief content officer.

It's a development that seems, somehow, both surprising and inevitable - the product of a society in which pets have become bona fide family members and fragmentation has become a defining feature of the media ecosystem. 

Media companies now offer niche content designed to satisfy every conceivable kind of viewer. Why not four-legged ones ?.

ANIMAL AUDIENCES : When I first heard about DOGTV, more than a decade ago, it was easy for me to dismiss it. The original idea, which came to Mr. Levi in 2006, was to create a television channel that could keep lonely dogs company while they were out of the house.

'' The idea is really to help them feel a little bit more relaxed and not anxious,'' he told me.

At the time, traditional TV was still king, and when DOGTV rolled out across the United States in 2013, it did so primarily as a premium cable channel available for $4.99 a month.

PRESSING PAWS : Indeed for as much as some animals might truly enjoy, pat TV, the genre would not have taken off if it didn't also serve human interests and needs.

As Marek Jancovic, a media studies scholar at Virge University in Amsterdam, pointed out to me, we find it entertaining to find our pets being entertained by screens, so much so that videos of pets reacting to TV has become its own content category online.

Turning on an eight-hour video of birds can also alleviate our own anxiety of leaving our pets alone, even if the cat gives it only a passing glance.

Still, we do sometimes feel guilty about our cat enrichment to a screen. It's a dynamic that is likely to be familiar to parents of young children, and it is already prompting discussions on Reddit about how much screen time is too much screen time for a pet.

Seen in the worst light, pet TV can seem almost dystopian - just the latest way to commodify animals and a superficial fix for the fact that many modern pets may be lonely and understimulated.

But videos designed for animals could also, potentially, be used to strengthen the bonds between people and pets.

ILyena-Hirskyj-Douglas, who directs the animal-computer interaction lab at the University of Glasgow, and her colleagues recently created MewTube, a tablet-based app designed to help visitors to a cat cafe interact with the feline residents by playing videos for the cats.

Pets with different personalities also seem to react differently. In a study published last summer, scientists found that dogs with excitable temperaments were especially likely to try to track objects, like balls or birds, off screen.

While those with fearful temperaments were especially likely respond to non-animal stimuli, such as doorbells, car horns and thunder.

The Honour and Serving of the latest Global Operational Research on Pets, TV and the world continues. The World Students Society thanks Emily Anthes.

With most respectful dedication to the Pet Lovers, owners and keepers, and then Parents, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

See You all prepare for the Great '' Constitutional Democratic Convention '' on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

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