The popular app is sweeping through the country, transforming dogs and cats into cute new creatures with round and furry mouse-style ears.

Ask any loving pet owner to scroll through images on their phones and dozens of photos will inevitably pop up, revealing their glorious animal friend in a number of adorable poses. If you were to look through a pet owner’s photo collection in Japan, though, chances are you might stumble upon a weird-looking creature like this.

The strange mutation is not the result of some bizarre breeding experiment, thankfully. It’s just a mind-bendingly cute image created with the help of a new app called Cymera that’s becoming hugely popular with pet owners in Japan.

▼ The trend is quickly growing, with a huge number of cats now being transformed into mouse-like creatures online.

The app, which was created by South Korean company SK Communications, allows users to manipulate images with a number of different photo editing options. The rounded ear feature caught on quickly in Japan, with pet owners loving the way the small change transforms the look of the whole animal.

While cats are the natural choice for the inherent irony of a mouse-like transformation, a number of other animals have been pictured sporting the new look too.

This pup looks particularly well-suited to the round ear trend.

While this one gets the extra addition of a drawn-on tail to complete the makeover.

Ferrets look good in mouse ears!

As do rabbits.

While this pup looks like an adorable little baby bear!

The app’s realistic effect is incredibly impressive, with the round Mickey Mouse-style ears seamlessly blending in to match each individual animal’s shape and colouring. To get in on the photo trend, the Cymera app can be downloaded for Android from here and for iOS here. And if you’d like to add your beloved animal to the growing number of round-eared creatures from Japan online, don’t forget to add the hashtag #サイメラ (Cymera) to your image!

Top Image: Instagram/yu3020ka
[ Read in Japanese ]