Do you remember… the Hampster Dance?

A whole web page of hamsters, row after row of tiny animated GIFs, every single one of them dancing. And the music: a squeaky, sped-up loop that lasted about nine seconds and then started again, and again, for as long as you could stand it.

Canadian art student Deidre LaCarte built it on GeoCities in the late nineties, partly as a contest with a friend to see whose homepage could pull in more visitors. The tune was a sped-up sample of “Whistle Stop”, the Roger Miller song from the start of Disney’s 1973 Robin Hood, which is why it sounded so oddly familiar.

It spread by email, by word of mouth and by people forwarding it to their colleagues at work. In 2000 it even became a proper pop single, “The Hampsterdance Song”. If it’s in your head now, we’re sorry. It’ll be there until Tuesday.