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The Reason Animals Are Cute

GNC

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There's a reason for everything, as they say, but is the reason a lot of animals are cute a form of self-preservation? You think, "What a cute creature" about its appearance so you don't kill and/or eat it? Does this mean animals can find other animals cute? Would a tiger that found animals cute starve? Because seeing cuteness seems to be a human trait.
 
There's a reason for everything, as they say, but is the reason a lot of animals are cute a form of self-preservation? You think, "What a cute creature" about its appearance so you don't kill and/or eat it? Does this mean animals can find other animals cute? Would a tiger that found animals cute starve? Because seeing cuteness seems to be a human trait.
I think it could be, like an outside chance. A last-ditch survival strategy.
Other (higher order) animals also fall under the spell of cuteness. It might explain why there are small children who get adopted by a wolf pack or group of baboons, rather than attacked and eaten.
 
I think it could be, like an outside chance. A last-ditch survival strategy.
Other (higher order) animals also fall under the spell of cuteness. It might explain why there are small children who get adopted by a wolf pack or group of baboons, rather than attacked and eaten.

Yes, that's a good point - I'm reminded of the late Koko the Gorilla, who took to raising kittens.
 
Yes, that's a good point - I'm reminded of the late Koko the Gorilla, who took to raising kittens.

This is the moment a gorilla is seen tenderly playing with a wild bushbaby which had ended up inside its enclosure at a sanctuary for rescued animals.

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Bobo, a Western Lowland gorilla who weighs about 200kg, is seen holding the tiny bushbaby – which weighs around 200g – and letting it move around its body at the Ape Action Africa sanctuary in Cameroon.

The remarkable chance encounter was spotted only because Bobo’s caregiver happened upon the scene during his morning checks.

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Bobo spent nearly two hours with the bushbaby, then returned it to a set of trees within his enclosure, and the bushbaby disappeared from view.

https://www.independent.ie/world-ne...hbaby-during-a-chance-encounter-37272696.html

Perhaps the whole “awww, cute!” issue arises because:

a) Most people normally only observe animals closely when they’re in zoos.

b) Zoo animals are often bored and understimulated, hence;

c) They seize any novelty in order to pass the time.

This does not, of course, explain why Bobo didn’t squish his little pal once the thrill had gone...

maximus otter
 
So, thinking aloud, if 'cuteness' offers an evolutionary advantage and increases survival, are there any/many 'cute' species that lived before the advent of higher-functioning creatures (such as primates) that are able to perceive (and hence act upon) this trait?
 
Interesting question. I have often wondered this myself, especially in relation to songbirds and relations whose habitat we keep destroying but who are easily able to get plenty of us to feed them.

I don't think tigers etc would starve if they had a sense of cuteness. Animals were cute long before humans ever considered becoming vegetarian and we still exist today. So long as you don't murder everything in sight in the way humans tend to do, there will be plenty of new cute animals being produced that you can eat and admire the cuteness of.
 
Interesting question. I have often wondered this myself, especially in relation to songbirds
Although songbirds have had enormous amounts of cruelty and death meted out to them by us on account of being cute and singing pretty songs so it seems to be rather a double edged sword.
 
There's a reason for everything, as they say, but is the reason a lot of animals are cute a form of self-preservation? You think, "What a cute creature" about its appearance so you don't kill and/or eat it? Does this mean animals can find other animals cute? Would a tiger that found animals cute starve? Because seeing cuteness seems to be a human trait.
Are we not anthropomorphising a bit?

Primates appear to react to 'cute', but isn't this the ingrained response/instinct we have for the long-term protection of our young - as we've evolved to a point where our young need a long 'protection period'. That 'cuteness' triggers those same instincts is just part of our regular make-up and behaviours.

We see baby birds in a nest and think they're cute. Our dog sees a handy snack.
 
Are we not anthropomorphising a bit?

Primates appear to react to 'cute', but isn't this the ingrained response/instinct we have for the long-term protection of our young - as we've evolved to a point where our young need a long 'protection period'. That 'cuteness' triggers those same instincts is just part of our regular make-up and behaviours.

We see baby birds in a nest and think they're cute. Our dog sees a handy snack.
But why should we think they are cute? They bear no resemblance to human children who are chiefly known for not being fluffy. Personally I am not much affected by human babies but show me a fluffy dinosaur relict with claws, sharp beak and beady eyes and I go all gooey. Where is the evolutionary sense in that?
 
Baby animals are certainly seen as more cute than grown-up ones, and animals exhibiting human baby-like behaviour are regarded as cute too. Maybe it goes back to infancy?

Doesn't explain why human babies are not cute to some people, though - are animals seen as more "pure" naturally speaking because they don't grow up to be people, with all the problems they bring with them?
 
It's said that we humans react strongly to anything whose "facial features" echo those of an infant, e.g. round, big eyes etc. Perhaps that's why we go goo-goo over hamsters and bushbabies, yet have very negative reactions to sharks, tarantulas and so on.

maximus otter
 
@maximus otter precisely so.

Desmond Morris (in the earliest days of coffee-table anthropology cf his book Manwatching) points-out that the bald/toothless/curled/subcommunicative state shared by human/primate newborn babies and very-old humans may well be a convergent evolutionary self-defence mechanism.

He similarly opines (without originality, I think, but with plenty of acclaim) that the animal characteristic big round eyes (including skull orbits)/cranio-facial flatness/snub nose/gracile jaw is all part of an emergent moê effect

This does start to get into some contentious areas of human / primate behaviour and essence-of-being, some of which may be convergently-recapitulated as parallelisms elsewhere within other sub-branches of the animal kingdom (setting-aside prey-predator aspects for a moment).

We also start entering the circular/inescapable conceptual mazes of whether or not ontogeny does or doesn't recapitulate phylogeny.

To paraphrase a number of popular science sources (and kin support hypotheses) all of humanity may be seen collectively as being a form of feminised ape, within which dominant neotenic features are retained, arguably also promoting herd/generational intelligence in so doing.

The other aspect regarding retention of cuteness (as well as not being eaten, not being left behind) is that cute animals / humans are (not just perceptually) more gamine/fecund than uncute ones.

Pretty people (and animals) are significantly-more fertile than ugly ones. Sperm motility, likelyhood of carrying a fœtus to term, lack of genetic defect, all are (to a substantial degree) peridestinated by cuteness. This is an inarguable (albeit potentially-offensive) aspect of human evolution.

In the same way that ill or dying people are meant to smell bad, pretty/cute people have a (statistically-)nicer fragrance in empirical tests....
 
Are we not anthropomorphising a bit? ...

A lot, actually ...

IMHO this discussion is being framed from a totally bass-ackward perspective - one starting from the attribute of 'cute', treating that attribute as something innate or given, and then turning around and crediting this attribute as something evolved for warding off predation.

The real issue here is what is it about young prey that gives a predator pause.

First off - there are lots of predators that don't pause at all. We're really only talking about the warm-blooded vertebrates (birds and mammals). Reptiles, for example, don't seem averse to eating small helpless prey.

Even among the warm-blooded aversion to eating 'baby prey' isn't universal. For example, one of the factors now believed to have contributed to the extinction of the Tasmanian tigers is that the tigers and devils feasted on one another's young, and the tigers' comparatively lower production rate made this reciprocal baby-feasting more destructive to the tigers' population (overall) than the devils' population.

The usual explanation is that some predators pause because the features of the prey's young (e.g., small size, large head-to-body ratio, relatively large eyes; scent; etc.) trigger avoidance owing to similarities with the predator's own hard-wired instincts toward its own species' young. These features match the sort of characteristics we humans call 'cute' - whether we're talking about human babies, kittens, or cartoon characters.
 
Maybe instead of "cute" I should have said "appealing in a non-lunch way"?
 
Maybe instead of "cute" I should have said "appealing in a non-lunch way"?
The concept of 'appealing' is both abstract, and relative. And it does not exist within the worldview of animals, aside from (arguably) alloparenting by higher primates.

Animals often treat other animals as a mate or a meal. Herds are clusters of secure convenience in numbers or offspring defence as are clusters/schools/pods.

'Cuteness' is a very human abstract concept.

Apes will indicate some degree of attraction (or vague lust) towards certain hyper-cuteness dolls or mannikins (big eyed moë/anime dolls), but tend to drop their level of attachment once their initial interest is piqued.

Morris opines that the entire human body is an exaggerated hyperface (breasts as eyes, navel/belly as mouth, arms as ears) and that there is much morphic resonance between human genitalia and actual faces. I can cite the actual paragraphs, if my copy of 'Manwatching' is still in my book-case.

That may all put an entirely-different slant on "cute" faces!!
 
We are programmed to find anything with big eyes/smooth face ie, babylike, non threatening and cute.
Some birds will feed carp with big open mouths at the side of a pond, "super-chicks".
Apex predators are confused if prey animals (young) don't run away from them, if the young whatever follow them the predator just sometimes accepts them.
Basically, any animal not acting in the usual manner can confuse other animals and "get away with stuff".
 
I don't care for human babies at all and think they're kind of horrid looking--baby apes, on the other hand, I find heart-breakingly adorable.
 
A lot, actually ...

IMHO this discussion is being framed from a totally bass-ackward perspective - one starting from the attribute of 'cute', treating that attribute as something innate or given, and then turning around and crediting this attribute as something evolved for warding off predation.

The real issue here is what is it about young prey that gives a predator pause.

First off - there are lots of predators that don't pause at all. We're really only talking about the warm-blooded vertebrates (birds and mammals). Reptiles, for example, don't seem averse to eating small helpless prey.

Even among the warm-blooded aversion to eating 'baby prey' isn't universal. For example, one of the factors now believed to have contributed to the extinction of the Tasmanian tigers is that the tigers and devils feasted on one another's young, and the tigers' comparatively lower production rate made this reciprocal baby-feasting more destructive to the tigers' population (overall) than the devils' population.

The usual explanation is that some predators pause because the features of the prey's young (e.g., small size, large head-to-body ratio, relatively large eyes; scent; etc.) trigger avoidance owing to similarities with the predator's own hard-wired instincts toward its own species' young. These features match the sort of characteristics we humans call 'cute' - whether we're talking about human babies, kittens, or cartoon characters.
Agree Enola- I understand that Neanderthal babies had pretty much identical feature size at birth when young to us modern Humans, eg the “cute” big eyes, little button nose, smaller brow ridge, and that as they grew their faces grew out to became the standard ‘classic’ Neanderthal face...

...and yet (and although the juries still out on the exact causes of their species demise, and it’s probably a combo of climate and environment change, lower fertility rate, smaller group size, smaller potential gene pool), possibly, I think, looking at the history of contact say between various native peoples and Europeans and how that wentthere was also (common) potential conflict with Archaic Modern Humans/ Cro Magnons, and the Neanderthal babies having the “cute” faces probably didn’t save them from being slaughtered, perhaps, so questioning what evolutionary advantage “ cute” features may have?
 
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