By: Nick Gambino
Your dog’s Snapchat account is about to get a major facelift. The social media app has just added a feature that will officially allow you to apply Lenses to your furry friend.
After adding Lenses for cats last month, they apparently realized there are more dog lovers than cat lovers in the world (my bias assessment, not based on anything resembling research). Before this official feature was added, you’d sometimes luck out and apply Lenses meant for the human face to your pooch, but it was difficult to get just right and never quite looked like it belonged.
The dog and cat Lenses are an extension of Snapchat’s mission to expand their camera’s ability to recognize different elements within its frame. The technology introduced into the app last year allows it to recognize different objects in your Snap and then add an array of wacky stickers. By recognizing cats, dogs and objects, you can spice up your environment beyond just human faces.
The available dog Lenses include large glasses, pizza (for some reason), antlers for the holidays, a halo of fish and bones and a blue butterfly that sits on their nose. You can apply all of these to your dog’s face with ease, making this the first time the app has become truly dog-friendly despite “dogs” being a popular theme. (Think of the popularity of a set of dog ears, nose and tongue applied as a Snapchat filter to videos.) If you squish your face into frame alongside your dog, you should be able to apply these new filters to your face as well.
There are only a few dog Lenses available at launch, but the company plans to add more in the near future. The ones currently available should suffice when you’re ready to include your best friend in some New Year’s social media fun.
