If you spend any amount of time on social media, you know that the digital world loves animals. Whether the animal is cute, ugly, or grumpy, no one minds.

The digital world can't get enough of animals in videos and images, and some even have their own social media channels!

It's true: Some pets have insanely popular social media platforms. The most popular pet is Grumpy Cat, with 1,138,689 Twitter followers (as of this writing). The black-and-white cat known as Sockington has more than 1,383,316 followers on Twitter.

Animals also have social media profiles on Tumblr, Facebook, and YouTube.

But why? The reasons for the popularity of animals on social media are simple:

• Animals are cute. (Yes, goats and snakes are cute to some people.)
• Content featuring what animals might be thinking lends itself to being shareable.
• Animals with personalities are just hilarious.

To find out more about the history of animals on social media, check out the fun, colorful infographic from Edgemere: