Which Baby Animals Look Cute? It May Be No Accident

A. Do you want to cuddle me? Sure, there are faces only a mother could love. And then there are faces no mother loves, because they belong to animals that fend for themselves from birth. The babies we find cutest—no matter what species they are—may have evolved to look that way because they need a parent's attention. That means even a crocodile can tug on our heartstrings. Konrad Lorenz, an Austrian zoologist, proposed in the mid-20th century that human infants are cute for a reason. He said evolution has created adorable babies so that their parents will take care of them. When we see a face with big eyes, a big head, and a tiny nose and mouth, we can't help but feel affection, he argued. It's easy to look at a wide-eyed puppy or kitten and imagine that other animals have evolved in the same way. (Lorenz was also known for studying "imprinting" in baby birds. He convinced small armies of newly hatched ducks and geese to follow him around like their mother, as in this video.) "Lorenz's proposal seemed so obviously true that no one bothered to test it," says Daniel Kruger, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health. Most research into what Lorenz called the Kindchenschema ("baby schema") has been done with pictures of humans or other mammals. By definition, Kruger says, all mammals need some care from their parents. The animal's mother has to at least hold still long enough for her newborn to get some milk. Yet Kruger was curious about whether the Kindchenschema applies to other kinds of animals. Birds, for example, have a range of parenting styles. In some species, hatchlings wait in the nest while their parents bring back food and vomit it into their little beaks. Other birds tuck their eggs into a warm corner somewhere and never come back. Have birds that need their parents' attention evolved to look cuter?