When Canadian art student Deidre LaCarte and her friends decided to have a little competition back in 1998, nobody would have guessed that she would create one of the first examples of a hugely popular online meme. LaCarte and her friends wanted to see who would be able to gather most online traffic to their sites. While her friends created something that nobody has ever really heard of, LaCarte went a different route and created a site for her pet hampster Hampton.

Through 1998, Hampton the Hampster’s site gathered minimal traffic, but the following year Hampton’s views swelled to about 15,000 views per day. What made Hampton so popular? Simple. The Hampster Dance.

LaCarte sampled a sped up nine second version of the song “Whistle Stop,” that was originally performed in the Disney rendition of Robin Hood back in 1973. But the song wasn’t enough for Hampton the Hampster as LaCartethen used animated GIF’s to show hampsters and other illustrated rodents actually dancing to the tune.

The rest is Internet history as The Hampster Dance has gone on to global fame. After the song was released in trance form in Canada, a music video was spawned and the song actually caught on in places like Australia. Since the initial release over a decade ago, Hampton the Hampster’s site has gone through multiple changes and the song and video itself has been updated, but the the original song remains.