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.
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.