We put photos online of everything, from our breakfast to the new shoes we buy. Researchers have published a study about what kinds of bird photos we like on the social media site Instagram. This is a photo-sharing social networking service where uploaded images are viewable for just 24 hours. The researchers are from a university in Germany. They looked into the question: "What makes a great bird photo?" They tried to find the most 'instagrammable' bird. They found that the frogmouth is the best. This is a nocturnal bird that lives in India, Southeast Asia and Australia.
The researchers looked at nearly 30,000 bird photos from nine popular photography accounts. They created an algorithm to find which photos got the most "likes". Bird expert Tim Snyder said the frogmouth was the most liked because of its large eyes and wide beak. He said that most birds' eyes are positioned on the sides of their head, but the frogmouth's eyes are more in the centre of its face. This makes it look more "humanlike". A wildlife photographer said: "Anything cute and cuddly [creates] something in human nature - and particularly anything with big eyes."