Nature’s way of nurturing babies
You’re being manipulated.
And it’s your own brain that’s doing it to you.
Nature’s way of nurturing babies
You’re being manipulated.
And it’s your own brain that’s doing it to you.
With throngs of people visiting the National Zoo to see Tai Shan, a panda cub, a timely article in the New York Times talked about our predisposition for all things cute.
Behavioral scientists have long known that there are certain cues that trigger our “oohs” and “aahs.”
Cues include bright, forward set eyes, set low on a large round face, big, round ears, clumsiness, a side-to-side gait and a nose that’s small.
Sound familiar? All these traits are linked to human babies, and to the young of most mammalian species, as well as some birds.
Consider the runaway success last summer of “March of the Penguins,” a movie about fuzzy, cute baby birds.
We’re so keyed in to these cues that we recognize a face in a colon, hyphen and closed parenthesis, like this :-).
Weird, isn’t it?
Our cuteness detector is definitely set a little low, and for good reason.
While beauty is something we’re inclined to appreciate from a distance, cuteness demands to be touched.
Our instinct is telling us to care for a helpless infant. All the cute cues are linked to infancy, and its vulnerability and need.
The greater the number of cuteness cues something possesses, the more strongly people react.
Scientists are still learning more about this curious and universal human response. New studies indicate that cuteness stimulates the same pleasure centers of the brain as a good meal, sex and some psychoactive drugs, like cocaine.
While cute may be habit-forming, it’s certainly not harmful.
But it can be pervasive and insidious, and marketers know more about cute than you and I.
Consider the cuteness of the Mini Cooper, or the Volkswagen Beetle.
A recent study at the University of Michigan showed that high school students found anti-smoking messages accompanied by cute cartoon characters to be more convincing than messages unaccompanied by images.
About that baby panda?
Part of the reason pandas have that adorable round head is to accommodate massive jaw muscles and heavy, grinding teeth. With a diet consisting of some 40 pounds of bamboo per day, pandas need crushing force in their jaws.
Getting too close to one could well be a rare case of cute being harmful.
In other news
On the first Saturday of each month, Elkhorn Slough Reserve near Moss Landing plays host to an “Early Bird Tour,” a morning-long walk around the reserve focusing on birding. The walks differ from the regular slough tours in that their focus on birds.
I’ve said before that the best way for people to become better observers is to do it in a group with one or more experienced birders.
February’s bird outing is next Saturday, starting at 8:30 a.m. Visitors to the reserve must show a current hunting or fishing license or pay a small day-use fee, but the tour is free. Binoculars are available to use at no charge. The visitor’s center is located at 1700 Elkhorn Road.
