Posted on 10th March 2023
There's lots of love on TikTok for capybaras, the gentle South American rodents, with an amazing 5.7 billion views of videos posted with #capybara and 1.9 billion views on #capybaratiktok! It's an increasingly popular area of the platform people are getting sucked into – with lots of people posting about capybaras being on their "side of TikTok" and major brands like Ryanair, Aldi and M&S joining in the fun.
Capybaras have appeared in lots of funny videos and memes over the years – often people humanising them and giving them their own personalities. Animal-loving influencer Kyle Thomas (35 million followers) even owns one as a pet and often shares videos of him feeding and taking care of it.
This catchy song about capybaras has really taken off throughout February and March. It's been used in 450,000 videos and counting and helped push capybaras into more mainstream areas of TikTok.
Lots of people have been using the song in videos of capybaras in the wild and in footage of their visits to see capybaras in zoos and wildlife parks around the world – like these videos from @joe_smith2002, @jazephua and @richhtwtwt.
Some users are getting very creative in their ways of incorporating the capybara trend into their videos, like baker Amanda from Baking Thursdays (2.4 million followers) who received a huge response to her capybara cake (25 million views) and capybara hot chocolate bomb (20 million views). She's since been taking requests to make different capybara characters, including a buff capybara, pregnant capybara and emo capybara.
Sweets brand Sticky Australia, who describe themselves as "the world's most bogan candymakers", have created sticks of rock with capybaras running through the centre – their "most requested design".
Other people have had fun making capybara-themed rugs, paper crafts and clay sculptures; and incorporating them as characters in their Lego cities and Roblox, the popular online game platform.
Austin and Marideth from dance duo Cost n' Mayor are known for their fun interpretations of popular sounds – and have created a routine to the capybara song at the request of one of their 5.7 million followers.
Brands are seizing opportunities to join in with the capybara love too – Ryanair and Aldi have shared carousels where they've photoshopped capybaras to appear on board their planes and in stores, using a sound about capybaras being "cool", "smart" and "beautiful"; while the likes of Specsavers, M&S, Hobbycraft and Ubisoft made use of the trending song.
Chester Zoo, who typically get a few thousand views on their videos, recognised "this song was made for us" and used it in a video of a capybara and its babies which got four million views and 700,000 likes in a week – making it one of the biggest videos on #capybara so far this month.
As the trend has grown over the last few weeks and the TikTok algorithm starts to push more and more capybara videos into people's feeds, people are starting to talk about them "taking over" their For You Pages ... and being unable to get the capybara song out of their heads. Influencer @alixearle jokes about the song being on repeat in her and her friend's heads while they're in class; while @sallysparksx jokes about it being difficult "trying to sleep after being stuck on capybaratok all night".
Lots of people seem to be loving the videos they're seeing though and are embracing the capybara hype – @irrationalfrito said "I'm neck-deep in capybara TikTok and no longer wish to escape. This is my life now."
And TikTokers including @howdyhague have used a CapCut template revealing how prominent capybaras are on their For You page, in response to the caption, "When someone asks me which side of TikTok I'm on". They've had more than 17 million views.
Spotting TikTok trends
The capybara TikTok trend is just one of the new trends quickly picked up and tracked by our Buzz service, which highlights some of the big talking points emerging on TikTok and social media every day.
Buzz from Shooglebox is used by journalists, creators and brand teams who need to spot and stay on top of the latest trends.
This stack of cards for the capybara trend gives you an idea of how you can use Shooglebox to create a read-only box of cards around a theme or trend and share it with others.
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