Are you an eagle, dog, bear or reptile? The dating trend that is unlikely to improve your love life

Name: Animal dating types.

Age: About a month old.

Appearance: Like a dog, like an eagle, like a bear or like a reptile.

What on earth are you talking about? A new trend whereby the physical appearance of all men is broken down into four animal-based categories, as recently discussed on social media.

This isn’t the time for me to mention that I’d like to marry a horse, then? God, no. This is the time for you to mention that a guy you work with looks a bit like an eagle.

Really? That’s all it is? A way to categorise men? Sure. If you’re “bear handsome”, it means you have a round face and broad shoulders. If you’re “reptilian handsome”, you have a straight nose and sharp eyes. “Dog handsome” men have big eyes and a cheeky grin and “eagle handsome” men have small eyes and a long nose.

For the sake of argument, what if I had small eyes, broad shoulders and a cheeky grin? Well, then you’d be a mutant, silly. According to this theory, you’d be a hellish mixture of bear, eagle and dog.

Just my luck. Don’t take it personally. The kindest way to look at this trend is as a way for women to broadly define the type of man they’re attracted to.

I hate it when men are victimised like this. Would it help if I told you that women can also be compared to animals?

Why yes, that would help enormously. Now we can all demean one another equally. Good. There are also four types of animal-based categories for women: fox (light hair, sharp features), cat (dark hair, round face, sharp features), deer (dark hair, long face, soft features) and bunny (light hair, round face, soft features). There, happy now?

Not really. Now I’m worried that I’m an eagle and I’ll fall in love with a bunny and create children who will swoop out of the sky and eat themselves. That’s natural. We’ve all thought that before.

What am I supposed to do with this information? The short answer is ignore it. For one, this is a social media fad and everyone will have forgotten about it by next week. And also, everyone knows that personality always trumps appearance.

Do say: “It is ethically problematic to break down men into their broadest physical characteristics.”

Don’t say: “Unless they can literally catch salmon out of waterfalls with their mouths, in which case hurry up and put a ring on it.”