Egg Challenge

Submission 11,023

Part of a series on Dogs. [View Related Entries]

About

Egg Challenge or #EggChallenge refers to a social media game in which people place an egg in the mouth of a golden retrievers, hoping to prove how soft their dog's pallet is by how carefully they handle the egg.

Origin

While the discussion around golden retrievers holding eggs in their mouths without cracking it may have existed before the internet, the earliest known example of it online was posted on October 3rd, 2009 by YouTuber ^[1] ampstube. The video (shown below) features a woman placing an egg in their dogs mouth. As of February 2018, the video has received more than 28,000 views.

Spread

On January 14th, 2013, Redditor ^[2] FierceThrombone posted in the /r/aww subreddit a picture of a dog with an egg in their mouth with the caption "My friend saw on Animal Planet^[3] that Golden Retriever's mouths are so soft they can carry eggs without breaking them, so she tested it." The post (shown below) received more than 3,200 points (98% upvoted) and 700 comments in four and a half years. The following year, on August 14th Tumblr ^[4] user thecutestofthecute uploaded the image and caption, receiving more than 518,000 points in four years.

One of the earliest known usage of the activity being referred to as the "Egg Challenge" comes from Twitter user @_jayzerine.^[5] On February 2nd, 2018, they posted a video (shown below, left) of a golden retriever with an egg in its mouth and the caption "Good boy, Aspen! 😚🐶#EggChallenge."

Two days later, Twitter^[6] user @NewtonConner tweeted a video of a golden retriever dropping en egg out of its mouth. They captioned the post "My parents did the egg challenge with my Golden Retriever today and here were the results 😂" The post (shown below, right) received more than1,600 retweets and 6,300 likes in four days.

However, the trend began to spread more rapidly following a post by Twitter^[7] user @laurdreyfuss. That day, she posted a video of a golden retriever with an egg in its mouth. They captioned the vide0 (shown below) "my aunt read online that a golden retriever’s mouth is so gentle they can hold an egg in their mouth without cracking it so she tried it on her dog and well." The post received more than 224,000 retweets and 683,000 likes in four days.

Following this post, more people began to attempt the "egg challenge." Twitter^[8]^[9] published two Moments pages about the post and subsequent attempts at the challenge.

Several media outlets covered the trend, including The Daily Dot,^[10] NBC,^[11] Maxim,^[12] BuzzFeed ^[13] and more.

TikToks

In November 2019, TikTok users began uploading short videos of their dogs holding an egg in their mouth. On November 21st @1jolly1 gained over 1.2 million likes in two weeks for his video of his dog holding an egg (shown below, left) while TikTok user @jg.dakattack garnered over 3.7 million likes for a similar video (show below, right). On November 26th, @abbsey9 uploaded a video of herself giving an egg to her cat (shown below, right). The video accumulated over 1.2 million likes and 52,800 shares in a week.