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Jack comments on Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych - Less Wrong
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This just rephrases the question as "why are bunnies cute?"
Why the downvotes? Dennett's claim is that the cute-finding instinct is helpful because it means we protect and care for babies. So okay, Sticky give a reason why we find baby bunnies extra cute... they combine two cute-conferring properties babyness and bunnyness. Fine, but that just pushes Alicorn's question back a step: How is it that this instinct that evolved so we would protect babies applies to rabbits? In other words... why are (adult) bunnies cute?
Here's a thought: A human who found other humans super-cute would be extremely vulnerable to cuckoldry (broadly defined). So that there might have been some selection pressure in the opposite direction.
Put another way, one can expect familiarity to breed a certain amount of contempt.
A human who locates some bunnies, considers them cute, and domesticates them, will ultimately get more bunny-meat with less effort than one who simply kills and eats bunnies on sight.
Then why aren't cows, sheep, horses, or even chickens nearly as cute as kittens and bunnies?
Baby sheep, horses, and chickens are very cute... cows not so much.
They're cute, but I think kittens would win against calves and chicks in a cuteness contest. Or leopard cubs, if you think size is a factor. My point was that cuteness is not well correlated with domesticability or with tastiness.
It's easy to propose explanation for this, harder to test them. Maybe it's because we regard sheep and chickens as food animals while kittens are companions and friends?
Regardless, your original point stands - human babies aren't as cute as many animal ones.
It still seems like the dominant feature for cuteness is being a baby. An evolutionary explanation that did not explain that would be very strange.
What if it's a flag for imprintability?
A cute, unattended creature is a potential investment, with the hardest part (childbirth) already taken care of. Large eyes, brains, and paws relative to the rest of the body is a physiological consequence of incomplete development, and most mammals have some potential use or other to whoever they recognize as 'parent.'
What possible use can a foster-child ever be to a non-human parent? As for human adoptive parents, animal cuteness does not seem strongly correlated with usefulness. Apart from the few species we domesticate anyway, how are "most mammals" of any use to us?
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2242217.html
If this happened in the wild, that momma pig would eventually have adult tigers ready to fight alongside her legitimate offspring, which could conceivably help to defend them from predators. At the same time, adopted tigers won't compete with the other piglets for root vegetables as a food supply. Combined-arms tactics, almost.
"Most mammals" are made of meat; if all else fails, they're edible. "The few species we domesticate anyway" were low-hanging fruit in terms of suitability for domestication, and also happen to be cuter than many non-domesticated species, which I doubt is a coincidence.
Calves are actually pretty cute in person, they're not as photogenic though (we had a farm at school so I've been around lots of young farm animals).
Well there is no doubt why domesticated animals are cute and this holds true for rabbits. Alicorn's claim was that this holds true for non-domesticated rabbits as well.