Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.ARPA
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!cord!pierce!topaz!milne
From: milne@uci-icse
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Cold blooded cuteness
Message-ID: <2972@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 28-Jul-85 03:23:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.2972
Posted: Sun Jul 28 03:23:40 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Jul-85 06:56:19 EDT
Sender: daemon@topaz.ARPA
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 52

From: Alastair Milne <milne@uci-icse>


   jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner) writes:
   >because humans find them cute.  Over millions of years of
   >evolution, cuteness proved to be an important survival trait,
   >because the meanest nastiest most successful predator of them all
   >was reluctant to kill cute animals.  

   It was an important survival trait alright, but not because it kept off
   predators (who frequently single out the young and the weak).  What it did 
   was arouse strong caring and protective instincts in the parents.  I don't 
   think even a wounded animal is acknowledged to be as dangerous as an animal 
   whose young are threatened.  Works, doesn't it?  


>  The treasuring of cute little animals is hardly a cultural
>  universal.  . . .  Another for
>  example: the fellows up in the Great White North who make their
>  living clubbing baby seals probably don't shed any tears over the
>  'cute' baby seals with their 'cute' big eyes. I suspect the 'cute'
>  reaction is primarily a fairly recent Anglo-American cultural
>  tradition, since I've never seen it mentioned in any other cultural
>  contexts. Anyone else out there have any ideas about this?

   There are few surer ways to arouse my ire than to make remarks like that
   about Canadians.  You are, I assume, referring to the harp seal hunt in 
   Newfoundland.  I suggest you find out what actually happens (and NOT from 
   Greenpeace, who paid to have a baby seal skinned alive for a photographer:
   the only time it was ever done) before you draw these conclusions.  To put 
   it mildly, the image spread by the most vocal people is rather one-sided.

   Reactions to the softer, more rounded forms of younger animals and birds 
   have been studied by biologists.  The same sort of reactions are found 
   across species, never mind cultures.  For instance, if a cardboard model is
   placed in a bird's nest, next to the real hatchling, and it is made even
   more rounded (what is called "supernormal"), the adult seems to prefer it
   over the real hatchling.  And just watching the drawings comparing model to
   hatchling, you had to admit the model was cuter.  Same for supernormal
   models of baby rabbits, and of human babies, even though, view objectively,
   they looked acutely hydrocephalic and in need of immediate surgery..  (If
   anybody's interested, I believe at least some of these experiments were
   done by Nikko Tinbergen in his famous experiments with gulls).  So I
   believe it's more biological than cultural.

   And even culturally, enjoyment of cuteness can hardly be called recent.  
   Look at the number of Victorian books (though I admit I'm thinking of 
   children's books right now) in which it appears.



   Alastair Milne