According to the study, published by the insurance firm, Budget Direct, cats are more popular than dogs in 91 of the 168 countries studied.

In fact, 91 countries were found to have more cat posts than dog posts on Instagram, compared to just 76 the other way around.

At continent level, cat posts are more popular in Europe and Asia, while dog posts outweigh cat posts across North and South America, Oceania and Africa.

Note that New York is the global city with the highest number of cat- or dog-tagged photos on Instagram, 59.6% of which were about cats.

To come to these conclusions, Budget Direct counted all the Instagram posts with the hashtags #ilovecats, #catloversclub, #catlovers, #ilovedogs, #dogloversclub and #doglovers then grouped them by country using location data.