Hey look at this duck:
Isn't he freaking adorable? Don't you just want to love the crap out of him? Well, there's actually two sides to the coin of cuteness and the driving factor is pretty dark. The human drive to cuddle soft fluffy animals, no doubt spawning the creation of stuffed animals, is actually a form of aggression. This scientific phenomenon has been dubbed 'cute aggression.' A study by Yale published in a scientific journal describes this as a paradox of emotions like happy crying. Usually, this is brought on by seeing said cute animal and being unable to touch it which then triggers aggression. So if you've ever felt the need to squeeze the brains out of an adorable hedgehog, don't worry, you're normal.
In the Yale study, participants were given bubble wrap were shown slideshows of cute animals and slideshows of neutral images. When shown images of cute animals they popped far more bubbles than the neutral images. The conclusion? Cuteness makes us aggressive. And what better way to fuel this phenomenon than by countless cute cat videos on the internet. Go figure.
But what makes us want to make physical contact with cute animals anyway? Well, the primal part of our brain thinks they're human babies.
Yeah, you read that right.
Konrad Lorenz listed what makes things cute - eyes bigger than one's body, a soft round shape, a large head relative to the rest of the body and several other traits. Many baby mammals and other animals fit this description by chance and so we as humans are inclined to 'awwwww' and want to take care of it....unless we can't. Then we get aggressive. So what about ugly baby animals? I'm not sure, but here's an ugly rhino baby.
You probably hesitated to 'awww' at this one. The cracks on it's nose and hard lines on it's face don't read 'soft' to us. Not to mention it's eyes are far smaller than it's body. It's head is roughly in proportion to it's body which knocks off another factor in the cute equation. Sorry, baby Sumatran Rhino, you're pretty ugly to us humans.
You probably didn't know that animators also follow the rules of what makes something cute to create adorable and lovable characters.
Notice anything? Yep, Bambi's proportions have been over exaggerated as well as Flower's and Thumper's to emphasize cuteness. Bambi's head is far larger than his body and his eyes are large and low set, mimicking a baby's. A real fawn has similar features, but not to this scale. Thumper's head isn't larger than their body, but the fluffy round cheeks and tail make up for that. If you squint and tilt your head you an easily imagine them as human children. The Disney animators did this on purpose.
To make the audience aww and coo at the adorable forest creatures.
Animals are cute, humans are weird, and for the love of god please don't actually squeeze a cute baby duck to death.
Sources:
- Why Do We Want To Squeeze Cute Things?
- Why Babies And Other Things Are Cute, Explained
- When We See Something Cute, Why Do We Want To Squeeze It
- Science Just Told Us Why We Want To Squeeze Cute Things
- The Scientific Reason We Always Want To Violently Squeeze Cute Kittens And Puppies
- Why Do Cute Animals Make Us Want to Squeeze Their Little Brains Out?
