Nightly News   |  April 25, 2011

Puppycam makes a comeback

As the more than 25 million people who have tuned in to watch a live stream of Kiko the Shiba Inu's new puppy litter have learned, resistance is futile. NBC's Mike Taibbi reports.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> finally tonight, something on the web which for dog lovers has the addictive power of a narcotic. that's what's happening right now. they're asleep, but you should see it, when mom comes in, they wake up. it's off the hook. among fans of web cams . puppy cam is the granddaddy of them all. actually more like the grandmother because when we noticed the san francisco family had fired up puppy cam again, we knew that meant this was a third litter for mom, and something for us to watch, in some cases for hours at a time. our report tonight from our dog lover, mike.

>> reporter: in the two weeks since the litter was born, the number of visitors to the site of a female named kiko has topped 27 million. it's a rare breed of japanese hunting dog , but this psychoanalyst said that's not what has so many people tuning in.

>> it's free, calming, it allows us to escape some of the stresses of life.

>> reporter: kiko's owners are a couple who have asked us to remain anonymous. in the first week, 4 million viewers in 70 countries spent more than 72 million hours watching online. context matters. then the economy had tanked, and by the time the litter had weaned, 15 million viewers had found a morsel of innocence in the puppy cam. if you're a fan of animal videos, the internet age gives you plenty of options, nesting apes, animals with self-portraits, but even this emu can't keep her eyes off the pups. it's not about money although someone is marketing the greeting cards and calendars. it's just about the simple images that trigger a simple response. nbc news, new york.