If we find animals different from us and historically dangerous animals SCARY (many legs, no legs, insects, venomous species, etc), why do we find FLUFFY and FURRY animals CUTE when WE are practically hairless? Why are bears cute when they have historically posed great threat to us?

Question

Lot of hairy and fluffy looking organisms are also dangerous too… like those worms, bears, some plants, etc

In: 2

Answer 1

All the creepy little animals that we are often innately scared of have one important thing in common: They may be full of deadly venom and it’s difficult to know for sure. Therefore it’s best to just stay the fuck away because really, nothing good will come of any interaction with them. The majority of them are too small to be a meaningful source of food, so there’s *no* reason to interact with them at all from an evolution POV.

The cute animals are almost all mammals. They’re our relatives and we share a lot of ancestry. There’s bound to be a lot of common patterns to things we see as “good”. It wasn’t too long ago us humans were furry too, and I’d expect that appreciating a healthy and beautiful fur was an important instinct for a very long time in comparison. Since there hasn’t been any selective pressure to *remove* that instinct, it remains.