Cats, dogs, bears, owls, weasels. Most of them could seriously injure/kill an average human with minor difficulty and yet we find them adorable?
Does not compute.
Cats, dogs, bears, owls, weasels. Most of them could seriously injure/kill an average human with minor difficulty and yet we find them adorable?
Does not compute.
It’s a bit like how people closely related to you are not attractive.
Except in Alabama
I think it’s more like an uncanny valley phenomenon. Or it could be that humans are largely neotenous and other primates haven’t developed that trait, so they remind us of old, or diseased members of our own species at a unconscious level.
Or it could be both. Strange hairy men that live in the woods? Avoidance response activated.
Yep, that’s the self-domestication thesis. Humans have selected themselves to look young and inoffensive, a bit like how they transformed wild ox into cows and wolves into, uh, poodles.
It definitely explains the ape paradox.
Ha. Except, jokes aside, I’m not sure it’s true. Obviously this is getting into dangerous territory but, as I understand it, people do tend to go for their own ethnic group disproportionately.
Then again, sexual attraction does seem to be qualitatively different. After all, that snow leopard would go straight to the friend zone if you know what I mean.