Pet Project: Introducing the Winners of the 2024 Best of the Beasts Pet Photo Contest

Technological advancements are coming faster than ever these days, which is both exciting and terrifying. While it’s understandable to be leery of what automation and AI mean for the future of, well, everything, some developments truly make life more worth living. For example: Did you know that your iPhone can now recognize your pets?

It’s true! The Apple smartphone’s latest operating system, iOS 17, is capable of identifying the 47,582 pics of your hound-Pyrenees mix, Fluffernutter, that you have stored on your photo roll. The only possible downside: If you die suddenly, your friends and family might discover how many more photos you have of your pets than your human loved ones. (It’s OK. Us, too.)

That potential embarrassment aside, we here at Seven Days are in favor of anything that makes it easier to store, catalog and gratuitously share pet photos. If the results of the 2024 Best of the Beasts pet photo contest are any indication, we’re not alone.

After a hiatus in 2023, Best of the Beasts returned in fine form this year. Nearly 600 readers submitted photos in five categories: Doggone Adorable (dogs), Purrfect Poser (cats), Best Dressed (animals in costume), Lady & the Tramp (multiple cute animals together), and Wild Card, which included everything from reptiles to birds to pigs to this year’s Wild Card champ, Frolic the Scottish Highland cow. See all the contestants in this online gallery.

Along with the winners below, you’ll find a handful of pet photos that the judges felt were just too darned cute not to include.