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No Stupid Questions @lemmy.ca
AmosBurton_ThatGuy @lemmy.ca

Why do we see pets/most animals as cute?

As in, what's the evolutionary reason for this? I can get seeing dogs as cute because they probably helped early humans by being "guards" essentially and they're just great companions in general, but what purpose does a cat have for example? All they want is food, and you get nothing in return except a cute cat to look at. Hell, even bear cubs are adorable and they'll eventually turn into something that can kill you with one swipe.

Why do we find animals that are or will grow into dangerous creatures cute? What reason does this serve?

18 comments

  • There's no provable answer at this point. We simply don't have enough understanding to be certain of the hows.

    And, with evolution it is how not why. Evolution is the why. Evolution is the process that occurs as an organism adapts to its environment over generations. If you ask "why babies be cute?", the answer is that at some point, babies being cute helped a species of an ancestral creature survive better long term, in the environment that it was in. That's the why.

    So, what we're left with is essentially guessing what pressures led to a trait. We have to guess from incomplete information because most of the things we're asking about go back hundreds of thousands of years, or millions of years. We don't have fossils of everything, we don't have perfect environmental records of every possible pressure shaping the species of the past.

    But, we can kinda make good guesses because caring for our young isn't just a human trait. Most mammals, many birds, some reptiles, etc, have some degree of attention given to their offspring. You can look at the species that invest more in parental care and see that it's going to be one good way to ensure that the species continues, right? It isn't the only successful way of that happening, but it definitely works.

    From there, we can also see several factors in non human animals that engage in high attention to offspring. One of them is that most of those kinds of animals are limited in how far along in physical development they are at birth (or the equivalent).

    Since any given branch of the evolutionary tree is going to come from common ancestors, a lot of our young are going to have similar degrees of traits developed at birth because we're related. It's like your cousin having the same color hair you do, just at a more basic scale.

    So, you end up with "cute" being a word we associate with a set of traits. Those traits are common to not only our young, but those of other species.

    Assuming all of that chain of assumptions and reasoning is accurate, then we find other animals cute because waaaaaay back in the day, we were the same species, and having our brains feel a protective and emotional response to our young was a survival trait in itself.

    What we find cute can be measured to a limited degree. A different ratio of facial features, higher pitched vocalizations, bigger heads in comparison to adult ratios. Those features will cause a response in anyone susceptible to that response. And it's the same response we have to our own offspring, even down to the chemicals released by our bodies when we are in contact with our offspring.

    We have the same rush of oxytocin when petting our kitties and puppies and chicks and whatever else you want to say is cute, as we do when holding our own infants and toddlers. It isn't only oxytocin, but that's the one you can find articles about the easiest iirc. At least in relation to our pets and baby animals.

    Since a lot of the animals we keep as pets retain features more akin to their early lives compared to their wild kin, the going assumption is that our closest companion species evolved along with us, and it was an advantage for them to be close to us, loved and protected by us. So, they probably kept a more babyish look in response to us doing so more often to the ones that had the optimal blend of features that looked babyish, but didn't interfere with prayer survival activities like hunting or mating.

    Wild animals, or rather animals that didn't co-evolve with humans, didn't have that pressure, so they don't retain those babyish features as long, as they only need to be "cute" long enough to be able to survive without their parents.

    This means that it isn't so much that we find animals that grow into predators cute, it's that the animals we find cute as adults became that way because we loved them into it.

    • Fascinating response, thank you for the detailed reply! That was a good read. This is one of many things I love about Lemmy, you get less but much higher quality replies to posts, unlike reddit where half of the replies are "jokes" from people that aren't even funny.

      Again, thank you!

    • There are animals that act nurturing towards other species' young too! Maybe it's a combined net benefit to be a little indiscriminate when caring for little ones.

  • You can see anything as cute if you can have empathy for them. I know most people are squicked out by earwigs for example, but I think they are so sweet and adorable. THEY RAISE THEIR YOUNG!

  • I think the question is backwards, & therefore accidentally missing-the-point..

    ( same as the survivor-bias question, back in WW2 EDIT: here's the link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P9WFpVsRtQg )

    It isn't that we see most pets as cute, rather, it is that if it isn't cute, it isn't a pet.

    So, we're looking-at an immensely selective subset of animals, & then framing the question on that misrepresentation..

    We tend to see babies, of most mammals, as cute, because of some generic wiring in us that codes for that, it seems .. AND ..

    One time, while living homeless out in the bush, I heard crashing through the leaves going this-way, then pausing, then going that-way..

    unzipped my "tent" & looked out.. it was a newborn fawn, seeing the world for the 1st time..

    its presence-energy was one of the most-beautiful things I've ever seen..

    Notice that humans tend to prefer looking at youthful humans?

    I find that there are several different reasons, but that most people aren't conscious of them..

    Lack of wrinkles & scars, OK, smooth, fit, .. vital..

    Right-there's part of it: vital.

    Ever seen healthy kittens, & their simple clean vitality?

    What civilized-life erodes from us?

    Another part of it is that when you're old, like me, & you spend ages digging into things, & realize stuff like ..

    .. Karl Marx honestly believed that communism meant the un-alienation of the proletariat, because he believed that communism somehow inherently meant "everybody owns everything, together", but ..

    .. ask the actual-survivors of communism, & it's always "nobody owns anything, & nobody cares for anything", which is why the expression of communism is Brutalism, historically

    ( and anybody who pretends that the ecological brutalism of communism isn't valid evidence, can go eat rocks )..

    well, the young are .. mentally blank, aren't they?

    Want a friend you're not going to get into profound ideological disputes with?

    DON'T pick an old human, whose spent their life being battered by life, & thinking on it all.

    Instead pick someone who's still in Kegan3, but permanently ( Robert Kegan's unconscious-mind-development stages 3, 4, & 5, can be described as

    • Kegan3: absorbing experience, wanting to feel liked - this is the mode of cows, who associate with validity, because they aren't bulling, themselves.
    • Kegan4: bulling-boss mode: pushing-out incompatible-meaning, & instinct that if anybody else has any validity, that subtracts from own-validity, ie all is zero-sum-game for validity. This is the mode of bulls, fighting for dominance - it is limbic, not any kind of conscious-decision.
    • Kegan5: systems-of-systems mode: what the best "Elders" of the indigenous people had earned, what the "elder generals" of the ancient times had earned, etc.

    ( Kegan & Lahey's "Immunity to Change" book is on our unconscious-mind's fighting-off of growing-up, its sabotaging our lives, & how to work around that innate-mechanism, getting it to understand, so growing-up, moving from dysfunction to function, can happen in our lives.

    It's a book I'd require all high-school kids to read at-least part of, so when they need to read it for real, they'll remember it, & find a library, & dig-in )

    : )

    But whom do we want as pets?

    Pretty-much always we want Kegan3 ( or lower? ) types as pets: NOT people who compete with us for validity, right?

    We're wanting, iow, dependents, we're wanting substitute children without the wrestling-match of actual-human-children..

    Now multiply the only-cute-animals-get-chosen-as-pets * we-want-substitute-children-without-the-difficulties-of-human-children ..

    & you're getting a "furbaby", right?

    There's another angle to add-in..

    Feral animals do NOT have the same psychology as pets: pets are developmentally-removed, more "baby-like" in their manner, their behavior, etc..

    I've come across a few people who pointed this out, & considering it through the years, they're right ( I spent 1/3-decade rough in the bush: they're very right ).

    So, we only select cute pets, we want them to be pseudo-children, AND we make them only partly grow-up, so they never become adult in the ways of their own kind ( usually with either ruthless killing or with ruthless herd-behaviors involved, as with horses, who'll force a reject-of-their-herd to do without food, & die, because that's the way their herds work )..

    Again, we're looking through "rose colored" glasses, & seeing "the question" as being only what our distortion of reality allows..

    All I'm trying to do is get people to see feral animals as the correct frame-of-reference for animals, & then see how we've babied-down/dumbed-down our pets, & how we do this for our own emotional-comforting, to have someone who "needs" us ( when we're bothering to be home where they live: when we're at work, they're just "furniture" or something?? unfair to them, tbh )..

    & this is deforming our ability to understand what the true-questions are..

    I agree with some who hold that experience with pets & herd-beasts is required for someone to really, honestly, understand human growing-up..

    but I'm adamant that outgrowing "dependents" is required for people to earn more-complete self-conquering, more-complete growing-up.

    Codependency is what people default-to, nowadays, whereas independence is the root of interdependence, what Stephen R. Covey called "synergy".

    I don't think he made it strong/clear enough, just how independent one needs to be ( for us guys, I've no idea how it maps to women's reality ), in order for interdependence to not be codependence..

    Anyways, just a bit of perspective that may be useful ..

18 comments