What is "Animals"? "Animals" is not just one animal, but all of the animals. Including badgers. Especially badgers. At one point, we thought about just going ahead and calling this thing "Badgers," but cooler heads prevailed.
Two generations ago, when people talked about "Animals," they were almost certainly talking about the rhythm-and-blues-oriented music group formed in Newcastle Upon Tyne and famous for their unique arrangement of "The House Of The Rising sun." In the '80s, the idea of "animal" was embodied perhaps most memorably by the hairy lunatic playing the drums in The Great Muppet Caper. And by the early '90s "animal" had become a catchword for cool amongst a grunge-obsessed youth culture: "Man, that Mother Love Bone song is so animal!"*
... but the Internet changed all that. And we here at BuzzFeed Animals want to bring you animals for a new generation - for a connected generation - for people who tweet their animals to the blogosphere, who Facebook animals out to their whole viral friendgroup, for people who live animals on mobile, Tweetdeck, and other crowdsourcing platforms. It's 2012, and animals means something new and fresh and exciting, and as such, we offer our own humble definition of the word - a new, forward-looking encapsulation of a pervasive and powerful idea. With your help, we will revise and refine this definition as it evolves, but for the time being, BuzzFeed Animals defines its key term as follows:
"Animals are mostly badgers and other kinds of animals, like cats."
Going forward, BuzzFeed Animals promises to deliver the following, daily, right to your "Internet doorstep."
1) badgers.
2) cute animals doing whatever.
3) BREAKING INTERVIEWS WITH IMPORTANT CATS.
4) any late-developing updates about the legendary '60s music group fronted by Eric Burdon.
In the coming days, months, and other time-units, look for BuzzFeed Animals to engage, challenge, and annoyingly interrupt the online conversation around animals that began with the infamous "dancing baby gif,"** and, after a long series of badgers, now resides with Maru, and Winston, and probably some dogs or whatever.
Also - upload your pet over there where people upload their pets - we are going to judge who has the cutest!
We hope you are looking forward to this great Internet safari*** as much as we are.
*I made that up, but I needed something for the '90s, so.
**Not that, but something similar to that except with an animal.
***NAILED IT.