by Doctor Science
Yesterday’s birding walk was good, but nothing unusual in the way of bird life. What made it one for the record books was the single cutest thing I’ve ever seen in nature: four Red Fox kits playing together. They must have been out of the den for a couple of weeks because they’re no longer dark, pretty much like the ones in this video:
Direct YouTube link
And let me tell you, if I’d had a video camera, a strong lens (I was about 50m away), and a tripod (because, judging by my photography, my cinematography would be Adventures in Shakycam), I could have made something that would get a million views on YouTube.
They were *incredibly* cute. Wrasslin’, pouncin’, eatin’ each other’s heads, chasin’ all available tails, jumpin’ high in the air the way Mom does to catch mice only with flailing, hilariously incompetent stalking — they brought it all to the adorableness table. They stuck really close to the line of bushes and trees where they probably were born; no parent was visible, but the Blue Jays were yelling up a storm at something a little ways away, so I expect Mom or Dad was pretty close.
My heart grew three sizes.
that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day!
The .gif is from somewhere on tumblr.
Anyway, this reminds me of a conundrum.
Generally speaking, “cute” means “things that remind us of babies”, and though I generally scorn the kind of reasoning I call “evo-psycho”, this does in fact make perfect evolutionary sense. Humans *must* take care of infants if the species is to survive, so wanting to be around them and cuddle them is the kind of thing I’m willing to call “instinctive” — not a term I use lightly.
The conundrum arises when you notice how strongly-inclined humans are to think of fuzzy or furry young creatures as “cute”, even though the infants of our own species are mostly hairless. In fact, human babies are not, generally speaking, the cutest things there are; furry little animals with similarly-shaped faces are a good deal cuter. For instance:
and, in contrast:
I think one reason the Internet is made of cats[1] — instead of baby pictures — is because kittens somehow push the “cute” button even harder than babies do. Kittens, in this theory, would be a supernormal stimulus for humans, cuter than cute.
But, on the other hand, my experience with my own instincts shows it’s not that simple.
Toward the end of my pregnancy with Sprog the Elder our cat, known as Nameless, seemed to be looking cuter and cuter to me. I petted her, called her my baby, talked nonsense to her, the whole bit.
Then I went into labor and we rushed out the door. We came back, with the baby on the outside, 18 hours later — because at that point insurance companies in NJ allowed only 12 hours post-partum hospital stay for an uncomplicated birth.
And the cat looked *completely different*. I mean, it was like seeing a different creature, as though she’d been swapped for her evil twin while we were out of the house.
When we went out the door, the cat looked like an adorable cute fuzzy cuddly almost-baby. When we came back, she looked like a *predator*: a longer face full of dangerous teeth, walking on paws full of razor-sharp claws. I didn’t want to cuddle her any more, I wanted to keep her *away from the baby*.
It wasn’t just the hormonal tsunami of labor doing this, because my husband had the same reaction. We both felt, as clearly as we’d ever experienced it, that a realio-trulio instinct had flipped a switch in our brains, to make The Baby the center of the universe. And, in particular, to make “is it a threat to The Baby?” the first test everything in the universe had to pass. Years later when Will Smith released Just the Two of Us I recognized what he was talking about *immediately*:
From the hospital that first night
Took a hour just ta get the car seat in right
People drivin all fast, got me kinda upset
Got you home safe, placed you in your bassinette
That night I don’t think one wink I slept
So while kittens in general seem to be a cute super-stimulus, my personal baby seemed like the most adorable thing ever, even when she was (objectively speaking) still squashed and purple-looking.
So I don’t know if I’m saying that there *is* an instinct for cuteness, or not. I’m probably sitting too close to the cat.
[1] And porn, of course, but that involves a different and better-understood instinct.
even when she was (objectively speaking) still squashed and purple-looking
We referred to our first son as a gila monster soon after his birth. The second son is just “the monster” for other reasons.
My mother called her three boys “the monsters” well past puberty (you know, when we pretty much were).
Someone noted that one of the transformations that Disney characters, most notably Steamboat Willie to Mickey Mouse, was that all their features became infantilized.
I remember when our first daughter was born and my wife was breast feeding and we were talking a walk and saw someone walking 4 or 5 baby dachshunds or some similar long short legged dogs and she actually said ‘ouch’ cause her breasts hurt.
I’m still trying to crack the code of Japanese kawaii but I think it will take me another lifetime here.
I am very reactive to cuteness in animals without being reactive to human babies. Just a deficet in me, I guess.
On the other hand i just got through reading a book about Stalingrad and the only part that made me cry was the description of the nine hundred some kids that cam crawling out of the rubble once the Russian forces fially prevailed. The author describe them as nearly feral, unable to make eyecontact, ready to bolt and flee like stray dogs. Those kids survived the fighting on their own by eating dead hourses and dogs and by making little caves i the rubble. Of the nine hunded plus only nine were reuintied with family. That’s really haunting me even those it happened a long tiime ago.
My physical anthro professor pointed out that many of the physical differencences between us and chimps and bonobos are “cuteness” differences — humans retain in adulthood many of the characteristics of baby chimps.
I’m with Laura in not finding newborns cute; I wonder if she, like me, is delighted by toddlers.
“Lucy Morgan” comment above this one is link spam.
IIRC, the essay about the gradual infantilization (neoteny) of Mickey was written by Stephen Jay Gould, and appeared in Natural History magazine.
Google says: yes. I’t’s here in smeary pdf, and collected in his The Panda’s Thumb
Joel, I’m afraid I’m not automatically responsive to toddlers, either. I tend to assume that they will be annoying until otherwise is proven.
I think I just don’t like humans very much. Exceptions for individuals, of course.
What, no link to Cute Overload??
(fixed)
The fact that I (and others) find cats cuter than other people’s babies seems odd. It suggests that animal and baby cuteness have different causes. (One could stem entirely from culture – but how? And why did people domesticate various animals in the first place?)
Possible I should analyze this more thoroughly before proposing an answer. But I have heard people talk about the, er, Excel Saga hypothesis.
Well, everyone knows that cats domesticated us not the other way around 😉