January 14, 2021 • 53 mins
If you took our advice and looked up baby beavers a few episodes back, you probably found them sooooo cute you couldn’t stand it. Or you just wanted to eat them up, which is weird if you think about it. Friend, prepare for the science on that!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w. Cute as a button Bryant, and there's
Jerry squee rolland and this is stuff you should know
(00:22):
of the podcast. A cute addition, that's right, the science
a cute. Yeah, I'm excited about this when I've been
wanting to do it for a while. I remember, like
that was one of the first things you ever said
to me when we met in the office, how cute
you are? Well? No, we were in the break room
and I saw a picture of a baby panda and
(00:44):
I just started to melt, and you went, hey, jerk,
you ever wonder why you think things are cute? I
bet there's science behind that. Maybe we should talk about
it one day, and look here we are. What was that,
well thirteen years ago almost man, you really responded to
(01:05):
that aggression into so chuck. Have you ever heard of
Mickey Mouse? Oh? I know several mice, but I've never
heard of Mickey Mouse. You've only heard of Modeled Muck
and Ricky Rouse. Um, well, let me tell you about
(01:26):
Mickey Mouse. He's actually the mascot of a very large
entertainment corporation called Disney. Uh. They own Walt Disney World,
Walt Disneyland. I think ABC owns them. They're they're affiliated
with ESPN. They're very, very big. But they have this mascot.
It's a mouse and his name's Mickey. He's he's kind
(01:47):
of big, especially abroad. Um. But if you look at
Mickey today, you think, wow, that's a really cute mouse.
Doesn't really look like a mouse. He's black and white
basically are brownish and black. Um. But also his few
teachers are very much not mouse like. But if you
were to go back and look at the beginning of Mickey,
I think he's from the nine twenties, like nineteen twenties.
(02:11):
In his earliest cartoons, he looked a lot more mousey
like cartoon mouse, but he had, you know, his pointed features,
not nearly as cute. But then if you fast forward
about ten years later, by the time rolls around and
he's in something called The Brave Taylor that was one
of his shorts, UM where I think he defeats a
(02:31):
giant or something like that. Um, he looks full blown
Mickey Mouse, but he looks way cuter and they had
done a few things to him. They had like made
his eyes bigger, they've made his features rounder less pointed. Um,
he had big gloves and big shoes. Now he's kind
of plump and oversized features, and he had gotten cute.
(02:51):
And the scientist Stephen Jay Gould, who really deserves his
own episode like Carl Sagan does, Um, just a really
interesting dude. Um. He said that Disney and his animators
had stumbled upon something that the zoologists and mythologist Conrad
Lawrence UM termed can can schema. I think I got
(03:14):
that right right. Uh yeah, can can schema very nice. Um.
But like years before Conrad Lawrence ever did that, they
had just kind of naturally figured out like, oh, this
can be way more appealing if we if we exaggerate
these particular features. And it turns out what they had
done is make him literally cut by the very scientific
(03:37):
definition of cuteness. Yeah. So Lawrence was an Austrian scientist
and in the forties came up with this. And this
made me feel quite good about myself actually looking over
this list about physical qualities that um, and it's not
just a person came me an animal. As we'll see
a lot of this is animal based. But these things,
(03:58):
these traits that would evoke a positive response, a very
strong positive response, and they are large head. M that's me, um,
high protruding forehead. I've always said you have a five head.
If any, it's it's average, large eyes, sort of average,
chubby cheeks bingo. Oh, you should make the cheeks make
(04:21):
a sonic appearance. Very nice. It's been years, still as
moist as ever. Sorry, everyone. Uh, chubby cheeks, small nose,
I'm an average nose, small mouth, and chin I'd say
average short, thick extremities, actually have sort of skinny legs.
I'll carry my weight between my chin and my belt.
Plump body shape. Bingo. So I am scientifically half cute.
(04:46):
You are very cute. I mean that's definitely. It's not
even up for debate. Really, I used to get called
cute by the ladies. Not handsome, but cute. There's definitely
I saw that. Um. Paul McCartney hated being known as
the cute beetle, probably for the same you know, the
same differences that you just mentioned, probably, but the the
(05:07):
like what you just said, this list you just you
just um you rattled off. That is Lawrence's kinkin schema
or baby schema or baby nous, which is basically like,
if you put all these things together, you have what
amounts to what we humans consider cute, and you can extrapolate,
like you were saying, not just onto babies, but onto
(05:27):
other animals and even onto like cartoon characters. Yeah, you
either have these things and you're regarded as cute, or
you don't and you're not exactly. Yeah, that's a really
good point that you can you can not only have this,
you can also lack it, and that that has that
modulates our response to whatever that thing is. Yeah, and
(05:48):
it's also important to point out that this is these
are guidelines, scientific sort of guidelines and truisms, but not
across the board like some people. Beauty is in the
eye of the beholder and cuteness is sure, So some
people might look at a baby, I don't know, just
some sort of weird reptilian thing that has none of
these traits and think it's super cute as well. Right, Yeah, yeah,
(06:11):
it is kind of subjective, but there does seem to
be um if not universal or widely tapped into sense
of what's cute and what's not. You know what, I mean, yeah, still,
let me rephrase that the person that thinks the baby
lizard that has none of these traits is cute, they
(06:31):
probably also think the panda is cute, right, you know
what I'm saying, Right, Yeah, they're probably not disgusted or
just totally turn off that dirty, ugly baby kitten. And
so so Lawrence was um. He compiled this list based
on his observations, and I guess from what I read,
like this whole study of cuteness is pretty young as
(06:52):
far as scientific investigation goes, So you know that we're
still figuring it out. It's still developing as it goes along.
Some of the study is involved or fairly suspect, but
there seems to be this this kind of general acceptance
of Lawrenz's k Kinkin schema, which is that it was
(07:13):
just it's so it's so obviously correct that from what
I read, some people just haven't even investigated, which is
good and bad. Um. Lawrence was a behaviorist and he
actually we met him first in our animal imprinting episode,
which was a really good one, but he studied that, um.
But he put this all together to study behaviors, and
(07:35):
what he was studying is exactly how babies UM get
adult humans who may not even be their parents to
respond to them in a way that um, that adult
wants to take care of that baby. And what he
what he came up with was this kinkin schema cuteness. Uh.
(07:55):
What he said unlocks um innate instincts in humans that
basically triggers like automatic behaviors like oh, I want to
make sure that you stay alive, so I'm going to
go find you some food that kind of stuff. Yeah,
And it corresponds to helplessness at birth. There's a direct
correlation between um, how cute you look and how how
(08:20):
little you can get buy in your own In the
animal kingdom, um, most mammals are born very small, very helpless.
Uh many months sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes years of
care before they can go off and kind of do
their own thing. That's called altricial. What to take to
being born helpless? You're altricial. Yeah, so if you're altricial,
(08:42):
you're probably almost more cute than an animal that is
born that can kind of run right out and do
things on their own, probably not as cute. That's precociale
altricial and precocial, right, and and the thing is is like,
if you step back, like it's just so easy to
(09:03):
just overlook this, and if you really start to think
about this, cuteness has been this adaptive, I guess, evolutionary
trait that's just been hiding and plain sight until Lawrence
really put his finger on it. But if you step
back and think about it, there's no there's no innate
or there's no reason that a baby has in and
(09:24):
of itself to evoke a response and a human even
its parents, um to want to take care of it,
but it needs that because it is an altricial species.
Humans are an altricial species. They'll they'll just die out
if you don't take care of a baby, and if
enough babies die out, eventually humanity dies out, the species
dies out. So it's an adaptation to make somebody want
(09:50):
to take care of you. And that is what Lawrence
figured out. That cuteness is that trigger that we find
babies cute and it makes us want to take care
of them. And that is one of the most mind
blowing things I know. Yeah, I mean if you look
at human babies. Human babies are born pretty early in
(10:10):
their development, like if um all things being equal. Human
babies should probably be born six months later than they are,
but they're not. Human babies come out very early. They
come out before their little fontanelles are even formed, and
they need a lot of care and uh, they're they're
(10:34):
born that Like, human babies are small so they can
fit out of the birth canal. Their little noses are
cartilage so they don't get broken on the way out.
Like you know, babies should have larger heads and should
have like that should but you know what I'm saying,
fully formed like strong noses, but they wouldn't be able
(10:56):
to to come out of a lady if that was
the case. Yeah, because our brains are have have developed
to be so big, and our craniums have developed in
in response to that that like we're evolutionarily speaking or
developmentally speaking, we're underdeveloped when we're born, even though we're
we would have been born at like a normal normal
(11:16):
gestation period for a human compared to other species. It's
like you're, this kid's out a little. This kid hasn't
baked fully, you know what I'm saying. And so that
really makes human babies even among you know, other mammals
that are altricial super dependent on caregivers to make sure
that it survives. Yeah. So, like a human baby's head
(11:37):
is really large compared to their body. Um, and these
are you know, these are some of the cuteness traits
that we mentioned early. On their eyes. You know, your
eyes don't really grow. Your eyes are about the same size.
I didn't know that, did you. Yeah, that's why when
you look at some babies and you're like, look how
huge their eyes are, it's just because they're on a
little tiny face. It makes sense, But I just had
(11:58):
never known that you're born basically the size that they're
going to be when you grow up. I think if
you really work them out, they can beef up a
little bit. Though. We mentioned those tiny little noses super
cute and very bendy. Um, they're little baby cheeks and
everything soft so you can get out of that birth canal.
(12:18):
And you know, formula and mother's milk keep you kind
of chunky and full. Um. You know, nobody's gonna put
a baby on a diet, no good lord, no. Um.
The skin is very loosed and soft. H. So you know,
if you go through a big gross spurt, it doesn't
you know, split open sounds gross. Uh, and then you
(12:40):
know the way babies move, it's just just very cute there.
Babies are awkward and they're clumsy, and um, they don't
like have the definition to like manipulate these these muscle
groups very well. Yet Yeah, and it's awkward and gawky
and super cute. All of this stuff together is cute
to us. And it raises the question, like, did babies
evolved human babies evolved to fit our definition of cute
(13:04):
or did our definition Actually I've seen both. I've seen both.
So it makes sense that like our definition of what's
cute and what we respond to is cute would be
based on the average human baby. But you can also
take an average human baby and tweak, like digitally, um,
a picture of a baby and tweak it to maximum cuteness.
(13:27):
And so there's this other idea that Okay, maybe originally
our idea of cuteness was based on baby features, But
the cutest babies would um logically get the most response
and would be the most the most likely yeah, and
would be the most likely to survive and thrive and
go on to reproduce. So it is entirely possible that
(13:49):
we have a speed as a species have gotten cuter
over the over the eons because of selection of the
for the cutest babies. Well, and that's been critical to
our serve bible. Um. You know it's uh when you
see something like that, when you see a baby chick,
you your instinct is to pick it up and cradle
(14:09):
it and make sure you know that a tree branch
doesn't fall on it, right, And that's the same goes
for babies. Yeah, because they share a lot of the
same similarities, the same kin kin kin schema. I wish
that ken wasn't in there. I wish it was just
kin den schema. Call it that. Then. I don't want
to get things wrong all the time, and we do.
(14:30):
We do. It's usually not purposefully, you know, Okay, But um,
that same set of traits can apply to other animals.
It was like you were saying, you know, animals that
fall into that set of traits appear cute to us,
and we want to save them, we want to take
care of them. Um. Like a little baby giraffe has
(14:51):
huge eyes, its features are kind of small compared to
a larger adult draft which even adult drafts are awfully cute.
But one of the things that a baby draft is
going to get you with is hobbling around trying to
stand up that first time I hit you with those
little shaky legs look out. Yeah, and that reminds us
or reminds some very ancient part of our brain of
(15:13):
human infant, you know, like developing its motor skill. So
it seems like it's not like our brains are confused,
like you're not looking at a baby giraffe, like, look
at that baby human. I love it. It's just it
triggers the same part of the brain that seeing a
human infant does, um, because of that same set of characteristics. Yeah, Like,
(15:37):
there was a study I found on mental flaws from
two thousand nine where scientists reported that, uh, people in
the study that viewed really cute images of puppies and
kittens performed better in the game of Operation you know,
the kids game than people who saw less like that
saw pictures of grown up dogs and cats. So it
just innately triggers this care response. It's really really interesting. Yeah.
(16:01):
And so what Lorenz called that innate releasers, that that
you see a cute baby and the cuteness acts as
an innate releaser, which triggers a set of inborn instincts
in every human to take care of that baby, and
that one apparently hasn't necessarily borne out. But there is
a lot of or there's an increasing amount of documentation
(16:23):
about how seeing something cute affects the brain. And I
propose that we take a commercial break and then come
back and talk about that afterwards. We'll be right back.
(17:00):
I think I has a commercial break. Sure, I now
it's in the in the survey, it's like an after
school special all of a sudden, so um, I think
before we dive into what you're talking about, I do
want to mention the wolf puppy thing. I thought it
was pretty interesting, is that there is an example of
a co evolved trait with the human brain that triggers
(17:23):
that cuteness response when you look at wolves wild wolves apparently,
and these were predogs. Basically, Um, they don't have this
muscle called the uh. Here we go with some Latin.
I guess uh leabator angouli oculi. Mettie Alice just made
a demon appere Oh my god, Um, this muscle they
(17:46):
don't have in their eyebrows, and apparently that is the
muscle that can make what we think of as puppy
dog eyes. Dogs that came later did of all that muscle,
and then we're bred for it because it made people
melt inside. Uh so that's why wolves, which is interesting,
like wolves have that sort of scowl and they can't
help it. But then I looked at wolf puppy pictures
(18:07):
and it's pretty cute. But maybe it's not in the eyes.
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what it is either,
but that I think that raises a really good question
that also kind of points out it like this, this
research is still very young, and there's contradictory information coming
in and a lot of it is just based on
intuition and that kind of thing. But there are, like
(18:28):
you said, there's that there are people walking around who think,
like that baby lizard is super cute. You know what
I'm saying, Like it it's not entirely universal, and you know,
maybe those wolf puppies have some other traits that have
nothing to do with the eyes that that are hijacking
your brain. The point that stands out to me is
that that that caregiving instinct that Lorenz pointed out, or
(18:50):
whatever whatever weird brain pathway we have, um, that's triggered
by seeing something cute, is that it extends beyond humans.
And I think that that kind of that that makes
humanity as a species like that much greater in my opinion,
that like that caregiving impulse can extend beyond humans. And
I mean that explains pets right there. Like, I don't
(19:12):
think we would have pets if that wasn't true, you know,
I mean, we'd have like guard dogs or something still,
but you know, not a pet. There would be German shepherds.
There'd be nothing but and they'd all be mean as
as snakes. And we probably have snakes too. That rode
the German shepherds. They still wouldn't be pets. Baby snakes
not so cute. There's also that weird thing where something
(19:33):
is so ugly it's cute as a young thing. Okay,
so that's a Japanese term. We'll talk about kawaie later.
But there's something called chemo kawaii, which is called gross cute. Interesting. Yeah,
they they've they've got it. That's something they're like the Germans,
but further east, they have like a name and a
term in idea for everything. You know. All right, we'll
(19:53):
put a pin in that because we did promise the
science of cute. So we're gonna have to look at um,
we're gonna have to look at the brain and actually
what's going on there. And they've done that of course. UM.
They've put people in the Wonder machine and they have
shown people pictures of baby faces to see what lights up.
And when that happens, you get a really strong immediate
response and what's called the orbitofrontal cortex, which is where
(20:19):
we regulate our emotions and our pleasure, and it's a
really really fast response, um one seven of a second. Um.
It doesn't take long when you see that baby or
that puppy or whatever you don't it doesn't take you
long to to immediately think, I need to care for
that thing and hold that thing. Yeah, Because so that
orbitofrontal cortex UM apparently has something to do with the
(20:42):
reward system. So your attention is captured very quickly and
you get a little burst of of pleasure from seeing
that that cute baby. And then there's another thing too
that that that came out of that two thousand nine
study using operation that all of a sudden, you're attention
is very much focused and you can complete tasks um
(21:05):
much better or at least remarkably better. Um, then you
could without seeing something cute. So it really does suggest
we have this inborn pathway to respond to something cute
in a pleasurable way with warm feelings. Um, that trigger
an ability a greater or more focused ability to do
(21:26):
something like, for example, care for or feed a baby
or that kind of thing that's that seems to be
borne out like Lawrence's innate release, or seems to be
being discovered um by neurology right now. Which is interesting though,
because caring for a baby is not, in my experience,
something you need that kind of focus for. It's not
like putting together a little model house with tiny pieces
(21:49):
of furniture. Um, it's just like keep this thing alive. Right,
But maybe maybe that's like, um, rather than being like,
oh you know, I think i'll I'd rather break the
law of the law and instead and you just stop
feeding the baby leaves you know what I'm saying, Like
your your attention to the task at hand. He's a
little more focused, so you're less distracted. Yeah, that's what
(22:12):
kind of focus. Sure. Yeah, Luckily it doesn't take much
brains because it's a lot of non smart parents out there.
That is true. Um So in that response, that speedy
response in the orbitofrontal cortex when you see that baby,
men and women both have that same spike. But I
think women report stronger caregiving, which they chalk up to
(22:33):
just gender roles basically and not necessarily anything to do
with the brain itself. Yeah, because the same areas light
up for men and women, I guess to the same degree.
It's just self reported as different, right right. And then
apparently also like this, this is not just um parents
who experienced this, like a human being will or a
typical human being will experience this. Yeah, I mean that's
(22:57):
the thing where like, as an adoptive parent, you know
this is uh, my daughter is not my seed. Um,
but I can't piplical it. Um but I can't like
I have nothing to base it on. But I can't
imagine a stronger connection or a stronger instinct to care
give and um so it's a It's an important trait
(23:19):
clearly because like you've seen movies where uh, people find
like a baby like abandoned by the dumpster and that
you know, you run out and you know, I suppose
some people might just say call it in and say Hey,
there's a baby over here. I'm not going near it,
but a humans inclination is to run over and pick
that baby up and wrap it up in something warm
(23:39):
and then maybe call the cops or whatever. Right, and
like you said, like run over there like that, like
it an urgent thing that that your brain would just
be like get over there, right, the helpless thing out
there by a dumpster, let's go get it. Yeah. Um,
that apparently would come probably more from um the baby's cry,
which I guess also a nights like the same kind
(24:01):
of um pathway as cuteness does, but it's a different
it's slightly different. There's not necessarily a reward. It's more
like urgency. And they call that a biological siren, which
which would you know, get you over there really quickly,
But it's not necessarily because you saw you know, you
you thought about how cute the baby is in those
swaddling clothes. Right. Uh. Sound is definitely important. Like that
(24:25):
same study, if you hear babies laughter or even as
the smell of a baby, you your brain lights up
in the same way. Yeah. So like that, we're presented
with the entire cute package of everything that's great about babies, sounds, smell.
They are really deeply manipulative. I think is is what
you're meant to take away from this episode. They are
(24:45):
just tiny little monsters saying like, take care of me
for eighteen years. That's right, and possibly beyond. If I'm
gen X exactly, it was a gen X or millennials.
I don't know. I feel like there were plenty of
gen xers that lived in the Bay, right, you're totally right,
or maybe that's every generation, but we weren't coddled as much.
Oh boy, you're gonna get us canceled the boy. Uh yeah,
(25:12):
So let's move on from that. Oh wait, here's another thing.
And this is the satisfinding Ever, when they did the study,
um that that brain activity was diminished when they were
shown baby faces that were had some sort of facial disruption,
like a cleft palate. And that is really one of
the saddest things you can imagine hearing. Yeah, because I
(25:34):
mean that would that would account for you know what
I was talking about earlier about how cuteness is selected
for that there's this like by no one's fault of
their own, but just through you know, the evolutionary process
of these these neural connections that were born that are
ready to make like wanting to respond to something cute.
(25:55):
If you're presented with something that doesn't quite line up
with that king Kin schema, Um, that baby is going
to have a much harder time getting that same response
from from somebody than just a traditionally cute baby. Well,
it's it's extraordinarily sad. I think we need to do
an episode on cleft palates too. That that stood out
(26:17):
to me that we haven't done that yet. Yeah, or
even worse than you know, in ancient times, those babies
would be walked out to the woods and left, you know, yeah,
for sure, you know. Um, Carl Lawrence apparently said that
the Quby doll, you know, our cup mayonnaise, So the
doll that that's based on if you take a look
at its face, Um, that in Lawrence's opinion, that was
(26:39):
the maximum exaggeration that you could reach of Kinkin schema
before violating it, and that afterward what was beyond it
was that wasn't coined at the time, but what he
was talking about was basically an uncanny valley like there's
your brain would start to be like, wait, there's something,
so thing is somewhat out of order here. UM, So
(27:03):
it's weird. There's like a really apparently there's a set
a package of traits that make up what is considered cute,
and straying outside of that, UM just kind of violates
it in some weird way. It violates like this this
pathway that we're we seem to be pre programmed to have.
I didn't know mayonnaise was going to make an appearance.
(27:25):
I I did because I saw the cuteie thing, But
before that I had no idea either. So cuteness is
going to activate other parts of the brain. It's just
not that superspeedy response that you get in the orbitofrontal cortex. UM.
So if you're a parent and you have a brain, UM,
you're gonna go undergo a really kind of slow change. UM.
(27:49):
As you parent and as you take care of that baby,
in bond with that baby, as they go into infancy. UM,
you're gonna still have that trigger of cuteness, but it's
just going to be a slower response and more complex
as far as your actual brain activity goes. Yeah, and
supposedly that co evolves with the cuteness of a baby,
like a newborn baby is just that. But like you
(28:13):
look at a baby some six months that same baby, Yeah,
you have to admit, it's pretty infrequent for a baby
to be cute right out of the womb. Yeah, I
mean generally they're little alien lizard type creatures. Sure, but
wait six months, and that same baby is going to
look awfully cute. So and within right, and within that
(28:34):
six months, um, you're going to have developed more sophisticated responses,
caretaking responses to that baby's cuteness. Um, it's pretty interesting
that like they both start to gel around the same time,
the babies start to hit pique cuteness and the caregiving
stuff becomes more and more sophisticated. It goes from I
need to keep this baby alive to um, you know
(28:57):
what college is this baby? I'm gonna get this baby
through college kind of stuff. You start thinking about that, right,
and that sort of brings back what we talked about
earlier as UM, like that that empathetic, compassionate response when
it's not even your child, Yes, when it's not even
from the same species. And and like you were saying,
(29:20):
you know, people tend to rate um, the species that
are most altricial as the cutest because they need the
most help. So that pathway can be hijacked by humans,
human babies and other species as well, and by people
who are trying to sell you stuff. As we'll see.
That's very true. Break, Yes, all right, we're gonna take
(29:43):
your break and talk about qute aggression, something that we're
pretty familiar with right after this. All right, So I've
(30:16):
talked before in the past about my wife Emily, and uh,
when she sees puppies and babies and other cute little things,
she uh, she says stuff like I want to I
want to punch that baby in the face. I want
to squeeze the life out of it. I want to
I want to eat that puppy. Like some things that
(30:39):
sound genuinely horrific, Maybe not, I want to punch that
baby in the face. That's a different I've seen that somewhere,
but it's a thing, and it's not just her, it's
an actual thing. It's called cute aggression. When you see
something and you say, you know, I want to put
that puppy on a plate and eat it, which is,
(31:00):
like you said, it's very weird when you step back
and think about it, um, and it actually it's of
a very recent um investigation, like I think two thirteen
is the earliest I saw um. And one of the
people who are leading the charge into studying qute aggression
is a Clemson psychologist named Oriana aragon Um, and she
(31:21):
and some of her colleagues have really kind of are
are are establishing this field of cute aggression. And the
reason why aragon is a pretty good social psychologist to
be investigating this is because her specialty is dimorphous expressions,
which is contradictory emotional indicators that don't really seem to
(31:44):
go together, but do because it's just so common, like
tears of joy um or nervous laughter, that kind of stuff,
And it seems that que aggression kind of falls under
that same umbrella. Yeah, and it's interesting because you say, sure, great,
qute aggression. We've got a name for it that doesn't
really explain it though, and it's explained kind of like
(32:08):
nervous laughter or tears of joy. It may be a
way of regulating something that's just too overwhelming emotionally. So
when they study qute aggression, they show people the cutest
pictures of the cutest things, see how the brain responds
and people who have the really biggest cute aggressive response, UM,
(32:30):
their brains are lighting up, but your reward system is
also lighting up at the same time, right, but it's
like an overwhelming reward response, like you're just uh, it's intolerable. Yeah,
And so the idea is that your brain brings you
down from that um by implementing like a not complimentary
(32:54):
what's the opposite of complimentary m you're a big jerk,
that kind of UM, that kind of emotion like anger
or aggression or hostility or something like that, to balance
it out and to bring you back down. Because it
makes sense that if you were just sitting there experiencing
overwhelming UM cute overload like you would, you might not
(33:17):
ever get around defeating that baby. You might just be
sitting there like with your tongue hanging out the side
of your mouth, drooling. Yeah. It's interesting because like a
lot of times, and I've heard a lot of other
people say this, but like Emily will say like I
just want to squeeze that baby, and that's followed up
with I can't even take it, Like I just can't
even take it with this cuteness, Like that's that's literally true,
(33:38):
Like your brain can't even take it. So I thought
it was cute. Aragon Um came up with a way
to measure cute aggression UM by using bubble wrap. This
I didn't quite understand this. She would give um bubble
wrap two people and show them different pictures, and the
pictures that rated the highest in cuteness UM evoked or
(34:02):
led to the largest number of bubbles pops. So the
idea is like, if you see something cute, pop bubbles
or just like here, hold this, and you just find
yourself popping them. I don't know. I don't know that.
I don't know actually to tell you the truth, UM,
I think yeah. I think it's more it's meant to
be like an unconscious thing, Like you're not supposed to
(34:24):
be like, well, this is an eighty bubble kitty, you know,
nothing like that. Or it's just like you look down
you're like, oh my god, there's no more bubbles left
this that that cat was so cute kind of thing. UM.
I saw another explanation for Q diggression in that it's
a response to a frustrated desire for caregiving. So where um,
(34:44):
where you want to go punch that baby in the face.
But you know, you'll spend a significant amount of time
in jail if you actually do that, right, Like, that's
that's where that would come a from like like that,
you can't do that. It's not your baby to go
snug goal and cuddle and take care of you can't.
You have to do it from a far exactly, So
(35:04):
you have to do it from afar. So it it
it comes out in this mixture of cute response and
aggression or aggressive words or uh you know that kind
of thing well, and that also kind of dovetails with
the cute sadness, which is I guess Aragon coined that
term as well. Is where um, you see a puppy
(35:26):
in a window and you go oh, no or ah
or make a frowny face. That's when you see a
lot when you see something really cute. And her theory
is that kind of like what you're just saying, like
that puppy is is uh is in the crate at
the adoption place and you can't get to it, or
it's just walking down the street with somebody and you're
driving your car and you can't get to it. So
(35:48):
you're expressing a kind of a frustration that you can't
get out of the car and squeeze the puppy, right,
so you have to squeeze your sphincter instead. But I
guess it comes out as disappointment though, yeah, yeah, and
it's it would seem to be frustrated, a response to
frustrated attempts at caregiving or a frustrated desire to caregive
because you see something cute and your caregiving instinct is
(36:13):
triggered or whatever you want to call it if you
don't don't agree with instinct, but there's nothing you can
do about it because you're driving and that things going
the other way, so you can't do anything to to
take care of it. So you have to get that
out somehow. And it seems like anger and aggression is
a good way for it to make it subside quickly.
But again again I really want to point out here
(36:33):
this is this is intuitive stuff. This is not stuff
where it's like this study backs the sub and this
study backs this up. From what I've seen, every single
study in cuteness and cute aggression, uh, involves about a
hundred and fifty college undergrads as your your your study population,
and they're popping bubble wrap and stuff like that like,
(36:54):
it's still very early in its research, but it does
make a lot of sense, you know, But that doesn't
necessarily mean that's that's accurate. Just take that and take
that with a grain of salt whatever that means. And
it's also, um, I'm not knocking the study, but it's
also you know, let's be honest, it's not the most
important thing in the world. No, No, it's like interesting
(37:18):
to understand. It makes for good reading on an internet article,
but uh, it's not driving Like, it's not solving a problem,
you know what I'm saying. I suddenly feel like we're
standing in the middle of a vast glass house and
we have rocks in our hands right now. Oh boy,
I think it's fun to talk about. I mean, that's
what makes I mean, this is perfect podcast spodder for sure. Um,
(37:43):
But like I'm curious that this could be applied at all.
I don't know. I think maybe it's just one of
those things where it's like, now we understand that it's documented,
it's understood, so we understand humans a little more, and
then maybe it'll open some door to some other thing
that we realize was connected that. You know that. Yeah,
but I totally agree with what you're saying. Yeah, but
(38:03):
I think you've pulled me any other direction. Nobel prize,
oh good God to send it their way. Good. So
you mentioned earlier about using the stuff to sell things,
and that is for sure true. Um, you can't. I mean,
you look at any Pixar or Disney cartoon or anime. Certainly, Um,
you're gonna see round babies and you're gonna see huge eyes.
(38:26):
When you see pamphlets that are trying to sell stuff
or or try to get you to donate to an
animal cause or a children's foundation. Um, they're probably gonna
put a baby or a puppy on that cover that
has the biggest, roundest face and eyes. It's manipulative, Um,
but used for good generally. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's almost
(38:48):
like um, using music in the background of an ad,
you know, like it's purposefully hijacking a very ancient neural
pathway that basically all humans have to get an emotional
response out of you, a positive emotional response. And it
might have nothing to do with with what they're trying
(39:09):
to sell, but you're you're now associating pleasurable, warm feeling
with you know, Mr Sparkle dishwashing detergent, you know when
really it's just a a joint venture of Matsumura Fish
Works and Tomorrow Heavy Manufacturing concern. Um. Like when they've
(39:31):
done um, they've done studies and like anti smoking campaigns
for teenagers, and they respond more to cartoon characters that
are cute, which sounds a lot like Joe Campbell. If
you ask me, it's like the opposite. That's true. Um,
but it does make sense like a teens might respond
to a list here is like a penguin and a
jacket or a polar bear. Then you know some adult
(39:53):
human like pointing their finger at you like John, can
you imagine to the teens don't smoke? Right? So? Um? Yeah,
it also makes you think, like you know, since so
many like cute toys, or so many toys are cute. Um,
when you're buying like a plush animal has, are you
(40:15):
responding almost in like an insane way to your cute
caregiving response? Just being manipulated and like you're going to
take that stuff to animal home and and and give
it care because it's just been activated in you? Is
that really? Is that? That seems to be what's going
on when you when you're when you buy like a
(40:36):
toy like that. That's interesting because then if you know,
if you see people walking around like that, you're like, oh,
well you've you've just been manipulated. Congratulations kind of thing.
But also you can make the case to um. And
I read a guy uh something by a guy named
Gary Jenosco who is the Canada Research Chair and Techno
(40:58):
Culture at lake Head University in thunder Bay, Ontario, and
he argues that UM that same thing that the commodification
of cute, uh say, like by Disney. He also argues
that National Geographic Magazine was big into getting people in
involved in caring about animals and nature. They really use cuteness,
(41:20):
especially in like the fifties and sixties. I guess um
that it forms our understanding of things in a very
specific way, which is this thing is cute. It's like
a toy to me. I want to pick it up
and carry it around and love it and hug on it.
But in doing that you really miss out on a
lot of the um the individual um personality of whatever
(41:46):
that animal is. Like you like you trade respect for infantalism,
right and like that. That that really stood out to
me because I have to remind myself that Momo is
like this sncient individual entity who deserves respect and to
be treated with respect. I just picked up any time
(42:07):
she you know, she looks at me a certain way
and it sets off my cuteness response. Like I've really
had to grapple with that. And luckily, you mean's like
really aware of that because she hasn't She's always been
a very small person and she us got get picked
up all the time, so she's like identifies with Mama
on that level. Um, And it's been like really an
exercise and restraint. Sometimes it's just be like, no, I've
(42:28):
just got to treat Mama like she doesn't want to
be picked up right now kind of thing. You know.
But I thought Canascar Jenascar really made a good point
that we we miss a lot of like what makes
an animal and animal in in favor of just seeing
it as something cute and a kind of a plaything
in a way. Yeah, and if like there's no clear
(42:49):
reminder that, um, you know, I've always had dogs and
multiple dogs and love dogs, but when you see a
dog like you know, go after a squirrel and catch
it and eat it or something, that these are the
reminders like these are these are animals, you know, like
the same cute dog will also you know, eat poop
out of it's a but if it could right or
(43:10):
eat your face if you died on the couch and
it was locked in the house with in a second. Sure, Um,
so we probably shouldn't finish until we talk about kauaie culture. Yeah,
this is the Japanese culture that is um well, this
says it best. Maybe the greatest pop culture expression of cute.
You think Pikachu think um like pop singers dressed as
(43:34):
a little sort of pigtailed schoolgirls. Uh. It's it's a
very very big trend in Japan. It's huge, Like everybody
has a cute mascot, Hello kiddies everywhere. It's just enormous.
And apparently it kind of like grew and evolved and
morphed over time, starting with this um student protest movement
(43:55):
in the sixties, where like the Japanese kids like um
just to sided, they didn't want to go to class anymore.
They sat around and read manga comic books instead and
kind of regress to back to childhood. And then that
kind of developed in the seventies into a trend for
cute see bubbly handwriting that led to Hello Kitty, and
(44:16):
then weirdly, it also made an appearance um as Uh
what is it Burrico women, which is very childlike. Um
women who adopted this this kind of demeanor UM two
number one, uh cut off any sense of threat that
they presented when they entered the workforce, but also to
(44:39):
kind of keep um unwanted advances from their male colleagues.
At Bay two, they entered the workforce as if they
were young kids, little girls, giggly and all that kind
of stuff. And this is like a persona that they
adopted that eventually became this trend, this cuteness trend that's
like everywhere in Japan. I never thought about the bubble letters.
(45:00):
That's so interesting because I've always sort of wondered, like
why elementary school girls. It seems like I would write
in those big, juicy round letters. Yeah, it makes sense,
it does. But that was apparently where Hawaii culture came
from originally as a handwriting thing. Interesting. Yeah, I was
(45:22):
curious here at the end, I was like, has science
proven what the cutest animals are? And I did find
something from list Verse and Jonathan Cantor the top ten
cutest animals in the world, according to science. But I
see nothing in the article about how science proved this,
literally nothing, but I figured i'd read it just for frenzies.
(45:44):
Number ten is most baby mammals, okay. Number nine is
the slow Loris. You ever see those things? You should
look at some of these. In fact, I'm gonna go
ahead and text you number one right now because and
I guess i'll just send it to you and are
since she's on our most recent thread, she'll be like,
what the heck is this all right? Coming your way? So?
(46:06):
Number eight is the mere cat, which I think mere
cancelok a little sinister personally. Yeah, I can see that
because of the like there they got the bandit masks on. Yeah. Uh.
Number seven is the koala. Yeah, did you just Lauras
looks like, no, that's not a Lauras that I sent you.
Are you looking at Laris? Well? What is this what
(46:26):
I sent you? We'll just put a pen in. It's
number one, okay, Yeah, I can see that. Number six
is the Flapjack and Dumbo octopode. Okay, um, piglets. Number
five match the fennic fox. Number four, that's the fox
with those huge ears and make those great sounds. The
(46:47):
red pandas number three, the panda bear, the white panda,
black and white pant is nowhere on this list. Weird,
this guy's way off. This must have been a list
from Jimmy Science, his roommate. According to Jimmy Science, I
think you mean James B. Science, number two with sea
otters and then number one. I don't know how I've
lived my whole life without knowing that this thing existed.
(47:09):
But the quoca q u o k k A from Australia.
It's a small marsupial uh same family as a kangaroo,
apparently in southwestern Australia. And that picture I sent you,
my friend, just google smiling quoca and you'll see this
one picture of this quoca literally jumping hands out, smiling
(47:35):
at the camera lens like give me a hug, Like,
give me a hug. This is and I think, I mean,
n you know, they said it's because they look like
they're smiling. Obviously is one of the big reasons. But
almost every picture you look at a quoca, it's got
this little smile. It's unbelievable. Hey, I have to say,
based on the screenshot you you need to charge your
phone soon. Uh yeah, and that was even earlier, So
(48:00):
I get that same stress because I'm I'm generally at
least guy. Yeah, and so when I see people do
screenshots and as that read, yeah, boy, I can't even
take it so um to finish up, chuck that the
converse of what you're talking about the cutest animals, um,
the fact that they exist also kind of implies that
(48:22):
there are non cute animals that exist and that they're
less likely to get our attention. Um. And as a result,
there is a kind of tongue in cheek. But I
also get the impression kind of serious group called the
Ugly Animal Preservation Society whose mascot is the blob Fish,
which makes a lot of sense, and their slogan is
we can't all be pandas I love that. Yeah, So
(48:45):
they're looking out for the ugly animals that we're going
to wipe out because they're not cute. Well, I know
that is a big deal when it comes to conservation,
is that that people can conservations have a much harder
time getting money and stuff. And we talked about it
in our Zoos episode. Yeah, like that's why they lead
(49:05):
with giraffes and elephants and stuff like that. Was that
the episode? I know we talked about it before and
they were like, look, man, just leave us alone. This
is the important stuff because it saves the other stuff. Yeah, exactly.
That blobfish that looks like man, yeah, ugly cute maybe yeah,
chemo kawaii. If kawaii sounds familiar, that's probably because you
(49:28):
heard it at the very beginning of the Quin Stefani
song Haull of back Girl, where she sees a bunch
of hard juku girls in Japan and goes, kawai nice.
That blobfish look like look like it's constantly saying okay,
I know they shouldn't call it that or fish. The
blobfish definitely works sooner man um, Well, since we have
(49:51):
wrapped it up with the old blobfish, if you want
to know more about the science of cute, just start
looking at cute pictures of the coo ooka. Sure, that's
a great place to start. And since Chuck said sure,
that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna
call this. I'm getting called out here and it's something
(50:14):
I haven't thought about. I got called out by a
couple of people for different reasons for saying, uh, this
phrase you know unless you live under a rock that
you know blank. One person said, Hey, that just makes
me feel dumb because I didn't know about one of
these things. Sure, I think that's the point, right, that's
your intent. No, I don't want to make anyone to
feel bad, but this is a different kind of response,
(50:35):
and uh, well worth reading. Hey, guys, making my way
through a backlog log of episodes, and I noticed the
thing that seems to pop up from time to time
and your descriptions of popular culture and products like hang
gliding at a sketch and Rubik's Cube. You make comments
like and if you don't know what one of these
is or looks like, get out from under your rock
and go look up a picture. Uh, someone who has
(50:57):
been blind since birth? Though, my problem isn't that I've
been living under a rock, but rather the pictures to
me are worth zero words. Yeah, I really got me good.
I grew up in the eighties, so everyone had a
Rubik's Cube, and I played with my fair share of them,
even though I couldn't solve them for many things in life. Though,
if I haven't physically touched it or had it described
(51:19):
to me. I only have the faintest idea of what
it looks like. In fact, I was a music music
education major in college, and it wasn't until my sophomore
year in age nineteen that I touched a brass instrument
for the very first time. Uh, the French horn still
fascinates me. I've enjoyed listening to your show for years,
and I've learned lots of visual information from you, from
(51:39):
what jiraffes looked like to fashion choices of punk rockers.
I wanted to make you aware of this though. You
can help people who can't look at pictures, whether uh,
we're blind or whether we're on the road driving in
a truck and we don't want to pull out our
phones to look at pictures. Thanks for years of learning
and laughter. Appreciate the work warmly, Ryan for Minneapolis and
(51:59):
Ryan in I have nothing to say but great point,
and I'll do better. Very nice, Chuck. I don't think
there's anything else you could say. You know why, because
you're a good person and jerk. That's right. And now
I will try and describe things to the best of
my ability, which might not be great but I think
you did a good job with the kawaka description. Smiling
(52:20):
wrote it. Yeah, it looks like it's smiling. That's all
you need to know that. Um, well, if you want
to take a chuck or meat a task, that's There's
not a lot of sport in that. But if you
want to do it anyway, that's fine. You can send
it to his via email, wrap it up and send
it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
(52:44):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart
Radio for more podcasts for my heart Radio because it
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w. Cute as a button Bryant, and there's
Jerry squee rolland and this is stuff you should know
(00:22):
of the podcast. A cute addition, that's right, the science
a cute. Yeah, I'm excited about this when I've been
wanting to do it for a while. I remember, like
that was one of the first things you ever said
to me when we met in the office, how cute
you are? Well? No, we were in the break room
and I saw a picture of a baby panda and
(00:44):
I just started to melt, and you went, hey, jerk,
you ever wonder why you think things are cute? I
bet there's science behind that. Maybe we should talk about
it one day, and look here we are. What was that,
well thirteen years ago almost man, you really responded to
(01:05):
that aggression into so chuck. Have you ever heard of
Mickey Mouse? Oh? I know several mice, but I've never
heard of Mickey Mouse. You've only heard of Modeled Muck
and Ricky Rouse. Um, well, let me tell you about
(01:26):
Mickey Mouse. He's actually the mascot of a very large
entertainment corporation called Disney. Uh. They own Walt Disney World,
Walt Disneyland. I think ABC owns them. They're they're affiliated
with ESPN. They're very, very big. But they have this mascot.
It's a mouse and his name's Mickey. He's he's kind
(01:47):
of big, especially abroad. Um. But if you look at
Mickey today, you think, wow, that's a really cute mouse.
Doesn't really look like a mouse. He's black and white
basically are brownish and black. Um. But also his few
teachers are very much not mouse like. But if you
were to go back and look at the beginning of Mickey,
I think he's from the nine twenties, like nineteen twenties.
(02:11):
In his earliest cartoons, he looked a lot more mousey
like cartoon mouse, but he had, you know, his pointed features,
not nearly as cute. But then if you fast forward
about ten years later, by the time rolls around and
he's in something called The Brave Taylor that was one
of his shorts, UM where I think he defeats a
(02:31):
giant or something like that. Um, he looks full blown
Mickey Mouse, but he looks way cuter and they had
done a few things to him. They had like made
his eyes bigger, they've made his features rounder less pointed. Um,
he had big gloves and big shoes. Now he's kind
of plump and oversized features, and he had gotten cute.
(02:51):
And the scientist Stephen Jay Gould, who really deserves his
own episode like Carl Sagan does, Um, just a really
interesting dude. Um. He said that Disney and his animators
had stumbled upon something that the zoologists and mythologist Conrad
Lawrence UM termed can can schema. I think I got
(03:14):
that right right. Uh yeah, can can schema very nice. Um.
But like years before Conrad Lawrence ever did that, they
had just kind of naturally figured out like, oh, this
can be way more appealing if we if we exaggerate
these particular features. And it turns out what they had
done is make him literally cut by the very scientific
(03:37):
definition of cuteness. Yeah. So Lawrence was an Austrian scientist
and in the forties came up with this. And this
made me feel quite good about myself actually looking over
this list about physical qualities that um, and it's not
just a person came me an animal. As we'll see
a lot of this is animal based. But these things,
(03:58):
these traits that would evoke a positive response, a very
strong positive response, and they are large head. M that's me, um,
high protruding forehead. I've always said you have a five head.
If any, it's it's average, large eyes, sort of average,
chubby cheeks bingo. Oh, you should make the cheeks make
(04:21):
a sonic appearance. Very nice. It's been years, still as
moist as ever. Sorry, everyone. Uh, chubby cheeks, small nose,
I'm an average nose, small mouth, and chin I'd say
average short, thick extremities, actually have sort of skinny legs.
I'll carry my weight between my chin and my belt.
Plump body shape. Bingo. So I am scientifically half cute.
(04:46):
You are very cute. I mean that's definitely. It's not
even up for debate. Really, I used to get called
cute by the ladies. Not handsome, but cute. There's definitely
I saw that. Um. Paul McCartney hated being known as
the cute beetle, probably for the same you know, the
same differences that you just mentioned, probably, but the the
(05:07):
like what you just said, this list you just you
just um you rattled off. That is Lawrence's kinkin schema
or baby schema or baby nous, which is basically like,
if you put all these things together, you have what
amounts to what we humans consider cute, and you can extrapolate,
like you were saying, not just onto babies, but onto
(05:27):
other animals and even onto like cartoon characters. Yeah, you
either have these things and you're regarded as cute, or
you don't and you're not exactly. Yeah, that's a really
good point that you can you can not only have this,
you can also lack it, and that that has that
modulates our response to whatever that thing is. Yeah, and
(05:48):
it's also important to point out that this is these
are guidelines, scientific sort of guidelines and truisms, but not
across the board like some people. Beauty is in the
eye of the beholder and cuteness is sure, So some
people might look at a baby, I don't know, just
some sort of weird reptilian thing that has none of
these traits and think it's super cute as well. Right, Yeah, yeah,
(06:11):
it is kind of subjective, but there does seem to
be um if not universal or widely tapped into sense
of what's cute and what's not. You know what, I mean, yeah, still,
let me rephrase that the person that thinks the baby
lizard that has none of these traits is cute, they
(06:31):
probably also think the panda is cute, right, you know
what I'm saying, Right, Yeah, they're probably not disgusted or
just totally turn off that dirty, ugly baby kitten. And
so so Lawrence was um. He compiled this list based
on his observations, and I guess from what I read,
like this whole study of cuteness is pretty young as
(06:52):
far as scientific investigation goes, So you know that we're
still figuring it out. It's still developing as it goes along.
Some of the study is involved or fairly suspect, but
there seems to be this this kind of general acceptance
of Lawrenz's k Kinkin schema, which is that it was
(07:13):
just it's so it's so obviously correct that from what
I read, some people just haven't even investigated, which is
good and bad. Um. Lawrence was a behaviorist and he
actually we met him first in our animal imprinting episode,
which was a really good one, but he studied that, um.
But he put this all together to study behaviors, and
(07:35):
what he was studying is exactly how babies UM get
adult humans who may not even be their parents to
respond to them in a way that um, that adult
wants to take care of that baby. And what he
what he came up with was this kinkin schema cuteness. Uh.
(07:55):
What he said unlocks um innate instincts in humans that
basically triggers like automatic behaviors like oh, I want to
make sure that you stay alive, so I'm going to
go find you some food that kind of stuff. Yeah,
And it corresponds to helplessness at birth. There's a direct
correlation between um, how cute you look and how how
(08:20):
little you can get buy in your own In the
animal kingdom, um, most mammals are born very small, very helpless.
Uh many months sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes years of
care before they can go off and kind of do
their own thing. That's called altricial. What to take to
being born helpless? You're altricial. Yeah, so if you're altricial,
(08:42):
you're probably almost more cute than an animal that is
born that can kind of run right out and do
things on their own, probably not as cute. That's precociale
altricial and precocial, right, and and the thing is is like,
if you step back, like it's just so easy to
(09:03):
just overlook this, and if you really start to think
about this, cuteness has been this adaptive, I guess, evolutionary
trait that's just been hiding and plain sight until Lawrence
really put his finger on it. But if you step
back and think about it, there's no there's no innate
or there's no reason that a baby has in and
(09:24):
of itself to evoke a response and a human even
its parents, um to want to take care of it,
but it needs that because it is an altricial species.
Humans are an altricial species. They'll they'll just die out
if you don't take care of a baby, and if
enough babies die out, eventually humanity dies out, the species
dies out. So it's an adaptation to make somebody want
(09:50):
to take care of you. And that is what Lawrence
figured out. That cuteness is that trigger that we find
babies cute and it makes us want to take care
of them. And that is one of the most mind
blowing things I know. Yeah, I mean if you look
at human babies. Human babies are born pretty early in
(10:10):
their development, like if um all things being equal. Human
babies should probably be born six months later than they are,
but they're not. Human babies come out very early. They
come out before their little fontanelles are even formed, and
they need a lot of care and uh, they're they're
(10:34):
born that Like, human babies are small so they can
fit out of the birth canal. Their little noses are
cartilage so they don't get broken on the way out.
Like you know, babies should have larger heads and should
have like that should but you know what I'm saying,
fully formed like strong noses, but they wouldn't be able
(10:56):
to to come out of a lady if that was
the case. Yeah, because our brains are have have developed
to be so big, and our craniums have developed in
in response to that that like we're evolutionarily speaking or
developmentally speaking, we're underdeveloped when we're born, even though we're
we would have been born at like a normal normal
(11:16):
gestation period for a human compared to other species. It's
like you're, this kid's out a little. This kid hasn't
baked fully, you know what I'm saying. And so that
really makes human babies even among you know, other mammals
that are altricial super dependent on caregivers to make sure
that it survives. Yeah. So, like a human baby's head
(11:37):
is really large compared to their body. Um, and these
are you know, these are some of the cuteness traits
that we mentioned early. On their eyes. You know, your
eyes don't really grow. Your eyes are about the same size.
I didn't know that, did you. Yeah, that's why when
you look at some babies and you're like, look how
huge their eyes are, it's just because they're on a
little tiny face. It makes sense, But I just had
(11:58):
never known that you're born basically the size that they're
going to be when you grow up. I think if
you really work them out, they can beef up a
little bit. Though. We mentioned those tiny little noses super
cute and very bendy. Um, they're little baby cheeks and
everything soft so you can get out of that birth canal.
(12:18):
And you know, formula and mother's milk keep you kind
of chunky and full. Um. You know, nobody's gonna put
a baby on a diet, no good lord, no. Um.
The skin is very loosed and soft. H. So you know,
if you go through a big gross spurt, it doesn't
you know, split open sounds gross. Uh, and then you
(12:40):
know the way babies move, it's just just very cute there.
Babies are awkward and they're clumsy, and um, they don't
like have the definition to like manipulate these these muscle
groups very well. Yet Yeah, and it's awkward and gawky
and super cute. All of this stuff together is cute
to us. And it raises the question, like, did babies
evolved human babies evolved to fit our definition of cute
(13:04):
or did our definition Actually I've seen both. I've seen both.
So it makes sense that like our definition of what's
cute and what we respond to is cute would be
based on the average human baby. But you can also
take an average human baby and tweak, like digitally, um,
a picture of a baby and tweak it to maximum cuteness.
(13:27):
And so there's this other idea that Okay, maybe originally
our idea of cuteness was based on baby features, But
the cutest babies would um logically get the most response
and would be the most the most likely yeah, and
would be the most likely to survive and thrive and
go on to reproduce. So it is entirely possible that
(13:49):
we have a speed as a species have gotten cuter
over the over the eons because of selection of the
for the cutest babies. Well, and that's been critical to
our serve bible. Um. You know it's uh when you
see something like that, when you see a baby chick,
you your instinct is to pick it up and cradle
(14:09):
it and make sure you know that a tree branch
doesn't fall on it, right, And that's the same goes
for babies. Yeah, because they share a lot of the
same similarities, the same kin kin kin schema. I wish
that ken wasn't in there. I wish it was just
kin den schema. Call it that. Then. I don't want
to get things wrong all the time, and we do.
(14:30):
We do. It's usually not purposefully, you know, Okay, But um,
that same set of traits can apply to other animals.
It was like you were saying, you know, animals that
fall into that set of traits appear cute to us,
and we want to save them, we want to take
care of them. Um. Like a little baby giraffe has
(14:51):
huge eyes, its features are kind of small compared to
a larger adult draft which even adult drafts are awfully cute.
But one of the things that a baby draft is
going to get you with is hobbling around trying to
stand up that first time I hit you with those
little shaky legs look out. Yeah, and that reminds us
or reminds some very ancient part of our brain of
(15:13):
human infant, you know, like developing its motor skill. So
it seems like it's not like our brains are confused,
like you're not looking at a baby giraffe, like, look
at that baby human. I love it. It's just it
triggers the same part of the brain that seeing a
human infant does, um, because of that same set of characteristics. Yeah, Like,
(15:37):
there was a study I found on mental flaws from
two thousand nine where scientists reported that, uh, people in
the study that viewed really cute images of puppies and
kittens performed better in the game of Operation you know,
the kids game than people who saw less like that
saw pictures of grown up dogs and cats. So it
just innately triggers this care response. It's really really interesting. Yeah.
(16:01):
And so what Lorenz called that innate releasers, that that
you see a cute baby and the cuteness acts as
an innate releaser, which triggers a set of inborn instincts
in every human to take care of that baby, and
that one apparently hasn't necessarily borne out. But there is
a lot of or there's an increasing amount of documentation
(16:23):
about how seeing something cute affects the brain. And I
propose that we take a commercial break and then come
back and talk about that afterwards. We'll be right back.
(17:00):
I think I has a commercial break. Sure, I now
it's in the in the survey, it's like an after
school special all of a sudden, so um, I think
before we dive into what you're talking about, I do
want to mention the wolf puppy thing. I thought it
was pretty interesting, is that there is an example of
a co evolved trait with the human brain that triggers
(17:23):
that cuteness response when you look at wolves wild wolves apparently,
and these were predogs. Basically, Um, they don't have this
muscle called the uh. Here we go with some Latin.
I guess uh leabator angouli oculi. Mettie Alice just made
a demon appere Oh my god, Um, this muscle they
(17:46):
don't have in their eyebrows, and apparently that is the
muscle that can make what we think of as puppy
dog eyes. Dogs that came later did of all that muscle,
and then we're bred for it because it made people
melt inside. Uh so that's why wolves, which is interesting,
like wolves have that sort of scowl and they can't
help it. But then I looked at wolf puppy pictures
(18:07):
and it's pretty cute. But maybe it's not in the eyes.
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what it is either,
but that I think that raises a really good question
that also kind of points out it like this, this
research is still very young, and there's contradictory information coming
in and a lot of it is just based on
intuition and that kind of thing. But there are, like
(18:28):
you said, there's that there are people walking around who think,
like that baby lizard is super cute. You know what
I'm saying, Like it it's not entirely universal, and you know,
maybe those wolf puppies have some other traits that have
nothing to do with the eyes that that are hijacking
your brain. The point that stands out to me is
that that that caregiving instinct that Lorenz pointed out, or
(18:50):
whatever whatever weird brain pathway we have, um, that's triggered
by seeing something cute, is that it extends beyond humans.
And I think that that kind of that that makes
humanity as a species like that much greater in my opinion,
that like that caregiving impulse can extend beyond humans. And
I mean that explains pets right there. Like, I don't
(19:12):
think we would have pets if that wasn't true, you know,
I mean, we'd have like guard dogs or something still,
but you know, not a pet. There would be German shepherds.
There'd be nothing but and they'd all be mean as
as snakes. And we probably have snakes too. That rode
the German shepherds. They still wouldn't be pets. Baby snakes
not so cute. There's also that weird thing where something
(19:33):
is so ugly it's cute as a young thing. Okay,
so that's a Japanese term. We'll talk about kawaie later.
But there's something called chemo kawaii, which is called gross cute. Interesting. Yeah,
they they've they've got it. That's something they're like the Germans,
but further east, they have like a name and a
term in idea for everything. You know. All right, we'll
(19:53):
put a pin in that because we did promise the
science of cute. So we're gonna have to look at um,
we're gonna have to look at the brain and actually
what's going on there. And they've done that of course. UM.
They've put people in the Wonder machine and they have
shown people pictures of baby faces to see what lights up.
And when that happens, you get a really strong immediate
response and what's called the orbitofrontal cortex, which is where
(20:19):
we regulate our emotions and our pleasure, and it's a
really really fast response, um one seven of a second. Um.
It doesn't take long when you see that baby or
that puppy or whatever you don't it doesn't take you
long to to immediately think, I need to care for
that thing and hold that thing. Yeah, Because so that
orbitofrontal cortex UM apparently has something to do with the
(20:42):
reward system. So your attention is captured very quickly and
you get a little burst of of pleasure from seeing
that that cute baby. And then there's another thing too
that that that came out of that two thousand nine
study using operation that all of a sudden, you're attention
is very much focused and you can complete tasks um
(21:05):
much better or at least remarkably better. Um, then you
could without seeing something cute. So it really does suggest
we have this inborn pathway to respond to something cute
in a pleasurable way with warm feelings. Um, that trigger
an ability a greater or more focused ability to do
(21:26):
something like, for example, care for or feed a baby
or that kind of thing that's that seems to be
borne out like Lawrence's innate release, or seems to be
being discovered um by neurology right now. Which is interesting though,
because caring for a baby is not, in my experience,
something you need that kind of focus for. It's not
like putting together a little model house with tiny pieces
(21:49):
of furniture. Um, it's just like keep this thing alive. Right,
But maybe maybe that's like, um, rather than being like,
oh you know, I think i'll I'd rather break the
law of the law and instead and you just stop
feeding the baby leaves you know what I'm saying, Like
your your attention to the task at hand. He's a
little more focused, so you're less distracted. Yeah, that's what
(22:12):
kind of focus. Sure. Yeah, Luckily it doesn't take much
brains because it's a lot of non smart parents out there.
That is true. Um So in that response, that speedy
response in the orbitofrontal cortex when you see that baby,
men and women both have that same spike. But I
think women report stronger caregiving, which they chalk up to
(22:33):
just gender roles basically and not necessarily anything to do
with the brain itself. Yeah, because the same areas light
up for men and women, I guess to the same degree.
It's just self reported as different, right right. And then
apparently also like this, this is not just um parents
who experienced this, like a human being will or a
typical human being will experience this. Yeah, I mean that's
(22:57):
the thing where like, as an adoptive parent, you know
this is uh, my daughter is not my seed. Um,
but I can't piplical it. Um but I can't like
I have nothing to base it on. But I can't
imagine a stronger connection or a stronger instinct to care
give and um so it's a It's an important trait
(23:19):
clearly because like you've seen movies where uh, people find
like a baby like abandoned by the dumpster and that
you know, you run out and you know, I suppose
some people might just say call it in and say Hey,
there's a baby over here. I'm not going near it,
but a humans inclination is to run over and pick
that baby up and wrap it up in something warm
(23:39):
and then maybe call the cops or whatever. Right, and
like you said, like run over there like that, like
it an urgent thing that that your brain would just
be like get over there, right, the helpless thing out
there by a dumpster, let's go get it. Yeah. Um,
that apparently would come probably more from um the baby's cry,
which I guess also a nights like the same kind
(24:01):
of um pathway as cuteness does, but it's a different
it's slightly different. There's not necessarily a reward. It's more
like urgency. And they call that a biological siren, which
which would you know, get you over there really quickly,
But it's not necessarily because you saw you know, you
you thought about how cute the baby is in those
swaddling clothes. Right. Uh. Sound is definitely important. Like that
(24:25):
same study, if you hear babies laughter or even as
the smell of a baby, you your brain lights up
in the same way. Yeah. So like that, we're presented
with the entire cute package of everything that's great about babies, sounds, smell.
They are really deeply manipulative. I think is is what
you're meant to take away from this episode. They are
(24:45):
just tiny little monsters saying like, take care of me
for eighteen years. That's right, and possibly beyond. If I'm
gen X exactly, it was a gen X or millennials.
I don't know. I feel like there were plenty of
gen xers that lived in the Bay, right, you're totally right,
or maybe that's every generation, but we weren't coddled as much.
Oh boy, you're gonna get us canceled the boy. Uh yeah,
(25:12):
So let's move on from that. Oh wait, here's another thing.
And this is the satisfinding Ever, when they did the study,
um that that brain activity was diminished when they were
shown baby faces that were had some sort of facial disruption,
like a cleft palate. And that is really one of
the saddest things you can imagine hearing. Yeah, because I
(25:34):
mean that would that would account for you know what
I was talking about earlier about how cuteness is selected
for that there's this like by no one's fault of
their own, but just through you know, the evolutionary process
of these these neural connections that were born that are
ready to make like wanting to respond to something cute.
(25:55):
If you're presented with something that doesn't quite line up
with that king Kin schema, Um, that baby is going
to have a much harder time getting that same response
from from somebody than just a traditionally cute baby. Well,
it's it's extraordinarily sad. I think we need to do
an episode on cleft palates too. That that stood out
(26:17):
to me that we haven't done that yet. Yeah, or
even worse than you know, in ancient times, those babies
would be walked out to the woods and left, you know, yeah,
for sure, you know. Um, Carl Lawrence apparently said that
the Quby doll, you know, our cup mayonnaise, So the
doll that that's based on if you take a look
at its face, Um, that in Lawrence's opinion, that was
(26:39):
the maximum exaggeration that you could reach of Kinkin schema
before violating it, and that afterward what was beyond it
was that wasn't coined at the time, but what he
was talking about was basically an uncanny valley like there's
your brain would start to be like, wait, there's something,
so thing is somewhat out of order here. UM, So
(27:03):
it's weird. There's like a really apparently there's a set
a package of traits that make up what is considered cute,
and straying outside of that, UM just kind of violates
it in some weird way. It violates like this this
pathway that we're we seem to be pre programmed to have.
I didn't know mayonnaise was going to make an appearance.
(27:25):
I I did because I saw the cuteie thing, But
before that I had no idea either. So cuteness is
going to activate other parts of the brain. It's just
not that superspeedy response that you get in the orbitofrontal cortex. UM.
So if you're a parent and you have a brain, UM,
you're gonna go undergo a really kind of slow change. UM.
(27:49):
As you parent and as you take care of that baby,
in bond with that baby, as they go into infancy. UM,
you're gonna still have that trigger of cuteness, but it's
just going to be a slower response and more complex
as far as your actual brain activity goes. Yeah, and
supposedly that co evolves with the cuteness of a baby,
like a newborn baby is just that. But like you
(28:13):
look at a baby some six months that same baby, Yeah,
you have to admit, it's pretty infrequent for a baby
to be cute right out of the womb. Yeah, I
mean generally they're little alien lizard type creatures. Sure, but
wait six months, and that same baby is going to
look awfully cute. So and within right, and within that
(28:34):
six months, um, you're going to have developed more sophisticated responses,
caretaking responses to that baby's cuteness. Um, it's pretty interesting
that like they both start to gel around the same time,
the babies start to hit pique cuteness and the caregiving
stuff becomes more and more sophisticated. It goes from I
need to keep this baby alive to um, you know
(28:57):
what college is this baby? I'm gonna get this baby
through college kind of stuff. You start thinking about that, right,
and that sort of brings back what we talked about
earlier as UM, like that that empathetic, compassionate response when
it's not even your child, Yes, when it's not even
from the same species. And and like you were saying,
(29:20):
you know, people tend to rate um, the species that
are most altricial as the cutest because they need the
most help. So that pathway can be hijacked by humans,
human babies and other species as well, and by people
who are trying to sell you stuff. As we'll see.
That's very true. Break, Yes, all right, we're gonna take
(29:43):
your break and talk about qute aggression, something that we're
pretty familiar with right after this. All right, So I've
(30:16):
talked before in the past about my wife Emily, and uh,
when she sees puppies and babies and other cute little things,
she uh, she says stuff like I want to I
want to punch that baby in the face. I want
to squeeze the life out of it. I want to
I want to eat that puppy. Like some things that
(30:39):
sound genuinely horrific, Maybe not, I want to punch that
baby in the face. That's a different I've seen that somewhere,
but it's a thing, and it's not just her, it's
an actual thing. It's called cute aggression. When you see
something and you say, you know, I want to put
that puppy on a plate and eat it, which is,
(31:00):
like you said, it's very weird when you step back
and think about it, um, and it actually it's of
a very recent um investigation, like I think two thirteen
is the earliest I saw um. And one of the
people who are leading the charge into studying qute aggression
is a Clemson psychologist named Oriana aragon Um, and she
(31:21):
and some of her colleagues have really kind of are
are are establishing this field of cute aggression. And the
reason why aragon is a pretty good social psychologist to
be investigating this is because her specialty is dimorphous expressions,
which is contradictory emotional indicators that don't really seem to
(31:44):
go together, but do because it's just so common, like
tears of joy um or nervous laughter, that kind of stuff,
And it seems that que aggression kind of falls under
that same umbrella. Yeah, and it's interesting because you say, sure, great,
qute aggression. We've got a name for it that doesn't
really explain it though, and it's explained kind of like
(32:08):
nervous laughter or tears of joy. It may be a
way of regulating something that's just too overwhelming emotionally. So
when they study qute aggression, they show people the cutest
pictures of the cutest things, see how the brain responds
and people who have the really biggest cute aggressive response, UM,
(32:30):
their brains are lighting up, but your reward system is
also lighting up at the same time, right, but it's
like an overwhelming reward response, like you're just uh, it's intolerable. Yeah,
And so the idea is that your brain brings you
down from that um by implementing like a not complimentary
(32:54):
what's the opposite of complimentary m you're a big jerk,
that kind of UM, that kind of emotion like anger
or aggression or hostility or something like that, to balance
it out and to bring you back down. Because it
makes sense that if you were just sitting there experiencing
overwhelming UM cute overload like you would, you might not
(33:17):
ever get around defeating that baby. You might just be
sitting there like with your tongue hanging out the side
of your mouth, drooling. Yeah. It's interesting because like a
lot of times, and I've heard a lot of other
people say this, but like Emily will say like I
just want to squeeze that baby, and that's followed up
with I can't even take it, Like I just can't
even take it with this cuteness, Like that's that's literally true,
(33:38):
Like your brain can't even take it. So I thought
it was cute. Aragon Um came up with a way
to measure cute aggression UM by using bubble wrap. This
I didn't quite understand this. She would give um bubble
wrap two people and show them different pictures, and the
pictures that rated the highest in cuteness UM evoked or
(34:02):
led to the largest number of bubbles pops. So the
idea is like, if you see something cute, pop bubbles
or just like here, hold this, and you just find
yourself popping them. I don't know. I don't know that.
I don't know actually to tell you the truth, UM,
I think yeah. I think it's more it's meant to
be like an unconscious thing, Like you're not supposed to
(34:24):
be like, well, this is an eighty bubble kitty, you know,
nothing like that. Or it's just like you look down
you're like, oh my god, there's no more bubbles left
this that that cat was so cute kind of thing. UM.
I saw another explanation for Q diggression in that it's
a response to a frustrated desire for caregiving. So where um,
(34:44):
where you want to go punch that baby in the face.
But you know, you'll spend a significant amount of time
in jail if you actually do that, right, Like, that's
that's where that would come a from like like that,
you can't do that. It's not your baby to go
snug goal and cuddle and take care of you can't.
You have to do it from a far exactly, So
(35:04):
you have to do it from afar. So it it
it comes out in this mixture of cute response and
aggression or aggressive words or uh you know that kind
of thing well, and that also kind of dovetails with
the cute sadness, which is I guess Aragon coined that
term as well. Is where um, you see a puppy
(35:26):
in a window and you go oh, no or ah
or make a frowny face. That's when you see a
lot when you see something really cute. And her theory
is that kind of like what you're just saying, like
that puppy is is uh is in the crate at
the adoption place and you can't get to it, or
it's just walking down the street with somebody and you're
driving your car and you can't get to it. So
(35:48):
you're expressing a kind of a frustration that you can't
get out of the car and squeeze the puppy, right,
so you have to squeeze your sphincter instead. But I
guess it comes out as disappointment though, yeah, yeah, and
it's it would seem to be frustrated, a response to
frustrated attempts at caregiving or a frustrated desire to caregive
because you see something cute and your caregiving instinct is
(36:13):
triggered or whatever you want to call it if you
don't don't agree with instinct, but there's nothing you can
do about it because you're driving and that things going
the other way, so you can't do anything to to
take care of it. So you have to get that
out somehow. And it seems like anger and aggression is
a good way for it to make it subside quickly.
But again again I really want to point out here
(36:33):
this is this is intuitive stuff. This is not stuff
where it's like this study backs the sub and this
study backs this up. From what I've seen, every single
study in cuteness and cute aggression, uh, involves about a
hundred and fifty college undergrads as your your your study population,
and they're popping bubble wrap and stuff like that like,
(36:54):
it's still very early in its research, but it does
make a lot of sense, you know, But that doesn't
necessarily mean that's that's accurate. Just take that and take
that with a grain of salt whatever that means. And
it's also, um, I'm not knocking the study, but it's
also you know, let's be honest, it's not the most
important thing in the world. No, No, it's like interesting
(37:18):
to understand. It makes for good reading on an internet article,
but uh, it's not driving Like, it's not solving a problem,
you know what I'm saying. I suddenly feel like we're
standing in the middle of a vast glass house and
we have rocks in our hands right now. Oh boy,
I think it's fun to talk about. I mean, that's
what makes I mean, this is perfect podcast spodder for sure. Um,
(37:43):
But like I'm curious that this could be applied at all.
I don't know. I think maybe it's just one of
those things where it's like, now we understand that it's documented,
it's understood, so we understand humans a little more, and
then maybe it'll open some door to some other thing
that we realize was connected that. You know that. Yeah,
but I totally agree with what you're saying. Yeah, but
(38:03):
I think you've pulled me any other direction. Nobel prize,
oh good God to send it their way. Good. So
you mentioned earlier about using the stuff to sell things,
and that is for sure true. Um, you can't. I mean,
you look at any Pixar or Disney cartoon or anime. Certainly, Um,
you're gonna see round babies and you're gonna see huge eyes.
(38:26):
When you see pamphlets that are trying to sell stuff
or or try to get you to donate to an
animal cause or a children's foundation. Um, they're probably gonna
put a baby or a puppy on that cover that
has the biggest, roundest face and eyes. It's manipulative, Um,
but used for good generally. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's almost
(38:48):
like um, using music in the background of an ad,
you know, like it's purposefully hijacking a very ancient neural
pathway that basically all humans have to get an emotional
response out of you, a positive emotional response. And it
might have nothing to do with with what they're trying
(39:09):
to sell, but you're you're now associating pleasurable, warm feeling
with you know, Mr Sparkle dishwashing detergent, you know when
really it's just a a joint venture of Matsumura Fish
Works and Tomorrow Heavy Manufacturing concern. Um. Like when they've
(39:31):
done um, they've done studies and like anti smoking campaigns
for teenagers, and they respond more to cartoon characters that
are cute, which sounds a lot like Joe Campbell. If
you ask me, it's like the opposite. That's true. Um,
but it does make sense like a teens might respond
to a list here is like a penguin and a
jacket or a polar bear. Then you know some adult
(39:53):
human like pointing their finger at you like John, can
you imagine to the teens don't smoke? Right? So? Um? Yeah,
it also makes you think, like you know, since so
many like cute toys, or so many toys are cute. Um,
when you're buying like a plush animal has, are you
(40:15):
responding almost in like an insane way to your cute
caregiving response? Just being manipulated and like you're going to
take that stuff to animal home and and and give
it care because it's just been activated in you? Is
that really? Is that? That seems to be what's going
on when you when you're when you buy like a
(40:36):
toy like that. That's interesting because then if you know,
if you see people walking around like that, you're like, oh,
well you've you've just been manipulated. Congratulations kind of thing.
But also you can make the case to um. And
I read a guy uh something by a guy named
Gary Jenosco who is the Canada Research Chair and Techno
(40:58):
Culture at lake Head University in thunder Bay, Ontario, and
he argues that UM that same thing that the commodification
of cute, uh say, like by Disney. He also argues
that National Geographic Magazine was big into getting people in
involved in caring about animals and nature. They really use cuteness,
(41:20):
especially in like the fifties and sixties. I guess um
that it forms our understanding of things in a very
specific way, which is this thing is cute. It's like
a toy to me. I want to pick it up
and carry it around and love it and hug on it.
But in doing that you really miss out on a
lot of the um the individual um personality of whatever
(41:46):
that animal is. Like you like you trade respect for infantalism,
right and like that. That that really stood out to
me because I have to remind myself that Momo is
like this sncient individual entity who deserves respect and to
be treated with respect. I just picked up any time
(42:07):
she you know, she looks at me a certain way
and it sets off my cuteness response. Like I've really
had to grapple with that. And luckily, you mean's like
really aware of that because she hasn't She's always been
a very small person and she us got get picked
up all the time, so she's like identifies with Mama
on that level. Um, And it's been like really an
exercise and restraint. Sometimes it's just be like, no, I've
(42:28):
just got to treat Mama like she doesn't want to
be picked up right now kind of thing. You know.
But I thought Canascar Jenascar really made a good point
that we we miss a lot of like what makes
an animal and animal in in favor of just seeing
it as something cute and a kind of a plaything
in a way. Yeah, and if like there's no clear
(42:49):
reminder that, um, you know, I've always had dogs and
multiple dogs and love dogs, but when you see a
dog like you know, go after a squirrel and catch
it and eat it or something, that these are the
reminders like these are these are animals, you know, like
the same cute dog will also you know, eat poop
out of it's a but if it could right or
(43:10):
eat your face if you died on the couch and
it was locked in the house with in a second. Sure, Um,
so we probably shouldn't finish until we talk about kauaie culture. Yeah,
this is the Japanese culture that is um well, this
says it best. Maybe the greatest pop culture expression of cute.
You think Pikachu think um like pop singers dressed as
(43:34):
a little sort of pigtailed schoolgirls. Uh. It's it's a
very very big trend in Japan. It's huge, Like everybody
has a cute mascot, Hello kiddies everywhere. It's just enormous.
And apparently it kind of like grew and evolved and
morphed over time, starting with this um student protest movement
(43:55):
in the sixties, where like the Japanese kids like um
just to sided, they didn't want to go to class anymore.
They sat around and read manga comic books instead and
kind of regress to back to childhood. And then that
kind of developed in the seventies into a trend for
cute see bubbly handwriting that led to Hello Kitty, and
(44:16):
then weirdly, it also made an appearance um as Uh
what is it Burrico women, which is very childlike. Um
women who adopted this this kind of demeanor UM two
number one, uh cut off any sense of threat that
they presented when they entered the workforce, but also to
(44:39):
kind of keep um unwanted advances from their male colleagues.
At Bay two, they entered the workforce as if they
were young kids, little girls, giggly and all that kind
of stuff. And this is like a persona that they
adopted that eventually became this trend, this cuteness trend that's
like everywhere in Japan. I never thought about the bubble letters.
(45:00):
That's so interesting because I've always sort of wondered, like
why elementary school girls. It seems like I would write
in those big, juicy round letters. Yeah, it makes sense,
it does. But that was apparently where Hawaii culture came
from originally as a handwriting thing. Interesting. Yeah, I was
(45:22):
curious here at the end, I was like, has science
proven what the cutest animals are? And I did find
something from list Verse and Jonathan Cantor the top ten
cutest animals in the world, according to science. But I
see nothing in the article about how science proved this,
literally nothing, but I figured i'd read it just for frenzies.
(45:44):
Number ten is most baby mammals, okay. Number nine is
the slow Loris. You ever see those things? You should
look at some of these. In fact, I'm gonna go
ahead and text you number one right now because and
I guess i'll just send it to you and are
since she's on our most recent thread, she'll be like,
what the heck is this all right? Coming your way? So?
(46:06):
Number eight is the mere cat, which I think mere
cancelok a little sinister personally. Yeah, I can see that
because of the like there they got the bandit masks on. Yeah. Uh.
Number seven is the koala. Yeah, did you just Lauras
looks like, no, that's not a Lauras that I sent you.
Are you looking at Laris? Well? What is this what
(46:26):
I sent you? We'll just put a pen in. It's
number one, okay, Yeah, I can see that. Number six
is the Flapjack and Dumbo octopode. Okay, um, piglets. Number
five match the fennic fox. Number four, that's the fox
with those huge ears and make those great sounds. The
(46:47):
red pandas number three, the panda bear, the white panda,
black and white pant is nowhere on this list. Weird,
this guy's way off. This must have been a list
from Jimmy Science, his roommate. According to Jimmy Science, I
think you mean James B. Science, number two with sea
otters and then number one. I don't know how I've
lived my whole life without knowing that this thing existed.
(47:09):
But the quoca q u o k k A from Australia.
It's a small marsupial uh same family as a kangaroo,
apparently in southwestern Australia. And that picture I sent you,
my friend, just google smiling quoca and you'll see this
one picture of this quoca literally jumping hands out, smiling
(47:35):
at the camera lens like give me a hug, Like,
give me a hug. This is and I think, I mean,
n you know, they said it's because they look like
they're smiling. Obviously is one of the big reasons. But
almost every picture you look at a quoca, it's got
this little smile. It's unbelievable. Hey, I have to say,
based on the screenshot you you need to charge your
phone soon. Uh yeah, and that was even earlier, So
(48:00):
I get that same stress because I'm I'm generally at
least guy. Yeah, and so when I see people do
screenshots and as that read, yeah, boy, I can't even
take it so um to finish up, chuck that the
converse of what you're talking about the cutest animals, um,
the fact that they exist also kind of implies that
(48:22):
there are non cute animals that exist and that they're
less likely to get our attention. Um. And as a result,
there is a kind of tongue in cheek. But I
also get the impression kind of serious group called the
Ugly Animal Preservation Society whose mascot is the blob Fish,
which makes a lot of sense, and their slogan is
we can't all be pandas I love that. Yeah, So
(48:45):
they're looking out for the ugly animals that we're going
to wipe out because they're not cute. Well, I know
that is a big deal when it comes to conservation,
is that that people can conservations have a much harder
time getting money and stuff. And we talked about it
in our Zoos episode. Yeah, like that's why they lead
(49:05):
with giraffes and elephants and stuff like that. Was that
the episode? I know we talked about it before and
they were like, look, man, just leave us alone. This
is the important stuff because it saves the other stuff. Yeah, exactly.
That blobfish that looks like man, yeah, ugly cute maybe yeah,
chemo kawaii. If kawaii sounds familiar, that's probably because you
(49:28):
heard it at the very beginning of the Quin Stefani
song Haull of back Girl, where she sees a bunch
of hard juku girls in Japan and goes, kawai nice.
That blobfish look like look like it's constantly saying okay,
I know they shouldn't call it that or fish. The
blobfish definitely works sooner man um, Well, since we have
(49:51):
wrapped it up with the old blobfish, if you want
to know more about the science of cute, just start
looking at cute pictures of the coo ooka. Sure, that's
a great place to start. And since Chuck said sure,
that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna
call this. I'm getting called out here and it's something
(50:14):
I haven't thought about. I got called out by a
couple of people for different reasons for saying, uh, this
phrase you know unless you live under a rock that
you know blank. One person said, Hey, that just makes
me feel dumb because I didn't know about one of
these things. Sure, I think that's the point, right, that's
your intent. No, I don't want to make anyone to
feel bad, but this is a different kind of response,
(50:35):
and uh, well worth reading. Hey, guys, making my way
through a backlog log of episodes, and I noticed the
thing that seems to pop up from time to time
and your descriptions of popular culture and products like hang
gliding at a sketch and Rubik's Cube. You make comments
like and if you don't know what one of these
is or looks like, get out from under your rock
and go look up a picture. Uh, someone who has
(50:57):
been blind since birth? Though, my problem isn't that I've
been living under a rock, but rather the pictures to
me are worth zero words. Yeah, I really got me good.
I grew up in the eighties, so everyone had a
Rubik's Cube, and I played with my fair share of them,
even though I couldn't solve them for many things in life. Though,
if I haven't physically touched it or had it described
(51:19):
to me. I only have the faintest idea of what
it looks like. In fact, I was a music music
education major in college, and it wasn't until my sophomore
year in age nineteen that I touched a brass instrument
for the very first time. Uh, the French horn still
fascinates me. I've enjoyed listening to your show for years,
and I've learned lots of visual information from you, from
(51:39):
what jiraffes looked like to fashion choices of punk rockers.
I wanted to make you aware of this though. You
can help people who can't look at pictures, whether uh,
we're blind or whether we're on the road driving in
a truck and we don't want to pull out our
phones to look at pictures. Thanks for years of learning
and laughter. Appreciate the work warmly, Ryan for Minneapolis and
(51:59):
Ryan in I have nothing to say but great point,
and I'll do better. Very nice, Chuck. I don't think
there's anything else you could say. You know why, because
you're a good person and jerk. That's right. And now
I will try and describe things to the best of
my ability, which might not be great but I think
you did a good job with the kawaka description. Smiling
(52:20):
wrote it. Yeah, it looks like it's smiling. That's all
you need to know that. Um, well, if you want
to take a chuck or meat a task, that's There's
not a lot of sport in that. But if you
want to do it anyway, that's fine. You can send
it to his via email, wrap it up and send
it off to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
(52:44):
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Chuck Bryant
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