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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!mcnc!rti-sel!wfi
From: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Cold blooded cuteness
Message-ID: <320@rti-sel.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Jul-85 17:05:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: rti-sel.320
Posted: Tue Jul 30 17:05:01 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Aug-85 00:42:12 EDT
References: <2972@topaz.ARPA>
Reply-To: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, NC
Lines: 96
Summary: 

In article <2972@topaz.ARPA> milne@uci-icse writes:

>>  universal.  . . .  Another for
>>  example: the fellows up in the Great White North who make their
>>  ...
>
>   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.

So what happens? My understanding is that the people who kill the
seals are Canadian citizens, and that they use clubs to do it. Also,
that at least some of them are living close to the edge and depend on
this income for survival. Hence the 'make their living...' Heh, heh...
perhaps you think I'm a typical crunchy-granola eating Greenpeacer or
something of the sort. Or perhaps you have a knee-jerk reaction to
ANYONE from the USA making ANY statement about Canadians. I could care
a fig about saving cute little baby seals, and my statement WASN't 
intended to be a statement of support for those who are critical of 
the seal harvest OR a slam against Canadians. I care a great deal more
about the Canadians who must feed their families than about young wild
animals whose 'natural' deaths would probably be a lot more brutal
than a quick clubbing. I DO care a great deal about the exploitation
of endangered species, because the number of species that have gone
extinct in the past 100-150 years is staggering and the relationship
between diversity and stability in ecosystems is far from clear. My
understanding is that the harp seal is far from being an endangered
species, however. If you're reacting emotionally to some perceived
slur against Canadians in general, I'm sorry but that wasn't the
intention of the comment. It may be that the wording of the
statement was ambiguous, and I apologize for that.

>   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.  

You mean, perhaps, 'in different species' rather than 'across
species.' 

>   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.  

Suggestive, but what does 'seems to prefer' mean? Greater feeding
frequency? And have the results been replicated? And how do you
quantify 'cuter': 30% cuter? 60% cuter? Saying that birds pay greater
attention to a model that's more rounded than its own young is one
thing; extrapolating this to a general cross-species genetic
predisposition for something you call 'cuteness' is quite another.
'Having to admit' a high degree of cuteness is hardly a scientific
observation.

A scientific experiment like the above doesn't mean a lot out of
context, and you haven't mentioned either corroboration or criticism
of the findings. I'm not familiar with the study you site since I'm
not an animal behaviorist, but I'll wager that there's not a consensus
on its validity OR meaning among animal behaviorists.

>   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.

You can believe it all you want, but if you can't show me a gene in
HUMANS that predisposes them to this kind of behavior you haven't
proved a thing regarding the existence or nonexistence of a genetic
predisposition to nurture 'cuteness' in human beings. 

I refer anyone who's interested to my postings in net.singles a month
or two ago in which inheritance of behavior was discussed. One of
those postings gave a bibliography to start people out on an
investigation of the topic; I refer you to those postings for my
position and arguments on this topic. I'm not going to go through it
all again in a different newsgroup.

I'll repeat a challenge I made there: I challenge anyone in this
newsgroup to show me a study whose results have clearly linked a human
behavior to a gene or group of genes, and whose results have (a) been
corroborated by followup studies and (b) shown not to be fraudulent. 
Cyril Burt's often-mentioned identical twin studies do NOT qualify
because of (b).
 
>   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.

The Victorian era counts as recent in my book.

                             -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly