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Your face scrunches up like you’re having an orgasm with your eyes open as you let out a thunderous ‘aaaaaaaaawwwwwww’. You gaze at the cute figure for another ten seconds fantasizing how much you want to squeeze and cuddle it until the cuteness runs out. But then what? You’re left with what I call “Cuteness Blue Balls.” There is absolutely nothing you can do about your cuteness frustrations, but to wallow in your own sadness. No button you can press, no body part you can stroke that can alleviate you from this pain.
Psychologist, Konrad Lorenz, theorized that cuteness is an evolutionary adaptation to ensure that adults cared for their children, which makes sense. We associate cuteness with weakness and helplessness. This could explain why we respond similarly when seeing non-cute figures in vulnerable situations. Because we are constantly burdened by a child’s cuteness, we have a strong desire to nurture and take care of it. Of course, a small minority prefer their baby dead and then grotesquely joke about it, but there will always be exceptions.
Lorenz’s theory falls short of explaining why animals emulate the same cuteness qualities humans have e.g. big eyes, big head, small body, and other soft features. He argues, however, that humans selectively breed their pets to have child-like features, which would explain the cuteness in domesticated animals. But cuteness stretches beyond cats and dogs – bears, bugs, ducks, owls, lizards, turtles, and many more non-domesticated animals all display cuteness.
How can so many animals be so gosh darn cute? In my opinion, ‘Cuteness Blue Balls’ is not limited to humans, but to all mammals. This hypothesis is easy to accept because mammals have to nurture their offspring comparable to humans and their children. This still leaves us questioning why mammals share cuteness qualities with humans. Being that we all share a common ancestor, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume that animals perceive cuteness in the same ways humans do – an interesting hypothesis to test.
Cuteness is like the unifying theory of interspecies emotional connection, which could explain the interspecies bonanza going on here
3 comments:
A duck isn't a mammal.
I read something once that said that the part of the brain that is stimulated when viewing something "cute" is the same part of the brain that is stimulated during sex.
it might also be possible that it was evolutionarily advantageous for us to find young animals cute, given that they'll grow up to be bigger animals, which provide more food. Doesn't much explain our penchant for tiger kittens...
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