Google puts augmented reality animals in its Search app

If you Google certain animals, you might just come across an augmented reality surprise in your results. The tech giant has rolled out a new card for Search that can put animal virtual animals in the real world, so long as you have an AR-enabled phone. According to 9to5Google, the trick works for alpine goats, angler fish, bears, emperor penguins, European hedgehogs, lions, tigers and timberwolves. We can confirm that it also works with dogs and cats. When you do a search on any of them, you'll see a card that says "Meet a life-sized [animal] up close."

The card also has a "View in your space" button that places an animated version of that animal in the environment you're in. You can move them around and resize them -- they even come with appropriate visual and sound effects. The tiger roars, the dog barks and scratches its ears, the panda chews on a piece of bamboo and the cat licks its paws and cleans itself.

You'll have to give the feature access to your camera and your storage to be able to see the AR animals the first time you view one. After that, you can play with it anytime you want. This is just one of the augmented reality features for Search Google revealed at its I/O developer conference in early May. 9to5Google says the tech giant also teamed up with NASA, Samsung, Volvo and other companies to create more AR objects for Search in the future.