Don't eat these dogs! Memes show similarities between food and pups

Imagine that you are trapped in some kind of twisted "Saw" scenario. You're locked in a dingy room that looks like the store room of an abandoned factory with no windows, doors that you can open by hand or a shred of a memory of how you got there. Suddenly, a low, creepy voice emits from a speaker and asks if you'd like to play a game.

Since you're going to be in there for quite a while, you'll need food to survive. The voice tells you that the only chance you'll have at avoiding the pain of slow starvation lies in two locked, see-through containers that are completely sound proof. One contains a delicious plate of homemade fried chicken and the other holds a small litter of Labradoodle puppies. You'll have to choose one as your main source of food purely by sight. It sounds easy...until you get a look at both containers.

Thankfully, you can take some time to train for that twisted challenge through a new series of dog vs. food memes that are making their way across Twitter and Reddit.

These visual challenges are from Twitter user and one-woman meme machine Karen Zack AKA @teenybiscuit. She collects photos of different breeds of dogs and the foods that seem to be their dopplegangers and organizes them in albums on her iPhone. Then she takes a screenshot of her collection, posts them to her Twitter account and the rest of the social media universe spreads them across the Internet.

So far, she's put together galleries that show the eerie similarities between Labradoodles and fried chicken, puppies and bagels and (my personal favorite) Chihuahuas and blueberry muffins. She's also explored outside the realms of dog doubles and their edible counterparts with galleries like sheepdogs and mops.

Users have not only been retweeting her galleries of beasts vs. food, but they've also been gaining traction on Reddit. Images of Zack's galleries started popping up on the photo-sharing site Imgur, and her "Dog vs. Muffin" gallery scored a spot on the front page of the "Funny" Subreddit. I'm sure that people who have dogs named Muffin must feel really conflicted.

If you're afraid to click any links to Zack's work because you're a little disturbed by the pairing of puppies with food, you might be more encouraged if you knew that there are other benefits to viewing her puppy photo galleries.

A study published in 2012 by researchers from Hiroshima University in the journal PLOS One found that looking at pictures of cute and cuddly things like puppy photos can increase productivity "induced by the cuteness-triggered positive emotion that is associated with approach motivation and the tendency toward systematic processing," according to the study's abstract.

However, if seeing a picture of a puppy motivates you to work harder so you can beat the drive-thru line that gathers at Popeye's during your lunch hour, seek treatment immediately.

[via MTV]