We all know that the algorithmic gods that power Instagram are, frankly speaking, fickle little bastards.

Here is Exhibit A of the fickleness:  look at this f’n feline eye candy.  Look at it!!    

Every time I post a big cat picture they do very poorly from an impressions standpoint.  I suppose that is because EVERYONE and their gorgeous mothers post pics on IG of big cats thus saturating the IG landscape with pretty kitties. 

The algorithms showed that sexy jaguar no love.  Thus, it performed piss poorly from a metrics standpoint.  That jaguar deserves better.

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Then, I throw up a half decent video of an incredibly supple yacare caiman doing some insane crocodilian gymnastics for a bit of tasty fish and suddenly everyone is losing their minds. 

And that is exactly what happened on my IG this week.  

Yacare caiman are omnipresent in the Pantanal.  I can honestly say that I’ve never seen more individuals of one species of vertebrate in one place.  Not for nothing, but they are a nice looking crocodilian too.  Look at that pattern on its jaw!  

Here is the video..

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For whatever reason this post was deemed to be worthy by the IG algorithm gods and it exploded from an impressions standpoint.

Peep these stats from my top posts for the last two years:

And the number 1 post is…a yacare caiman jumping for a treat.  It is #1 by a huge margin!

That yacare caiman video has 495 more impressions more than my next highest rate post (you can read about the incident that inspired that post here).  The source of the volume of impressions is from the From Explore option.  

Check out the From Explore section.  The algorithm gods deemed this post worthy viewing for the masses.  Getting into the From Explore section massively increases the exposure a post can have.  Praise be to the IG algorithm gods.

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1,020 of the 1,201 came from the From Explorer function on IG.  How did this post wind up in From Explorer?  I have no idea.  

Somehow someway the IG algorithm gods deemed this post worthy of mass viewing.  Is it a cool post?  Absolutely!  Is it cooler than any of my other posts?  Possibly, but I can’t say that for sure.  

Ultimately, I have no idea what please the IG algorithm gods and what doesn’t.  Sure, sure, I could do some research to find out, but what is the fun in that?  

Praise be to the IG algorithm gods indeed!  

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