Cats, dogs, bears, owls, weasels. Most of them could seriously injure/kill an average human with minor difficulty and yet we find them adorable?
Does not compute.
Cats, dogs, bears, owls, weasels. Most of them could seriously injure/kill an average human with minor difficulty and yet we find them adorable?
Does not compute.
I think part of it is that predators instinctively attract our attention—they fascinate us so we don’t get used to them and turn our backs on them.
I think this is a big part of it. Predators are stimulating and demand our attention. For most people spiders and snakes do so in a way that is upsetting, but because mammalian predators are less alien to us (and many resemble the cats and dogs we’ve domesticated) they’re attractive rather than repellent. But while I might find a lion adorable in video, I’m sure if one walked into my garden I’d be extremely fucking attentive.
Also, mammalian and avian predators are perceptive enough that they could tell we were acting like prey if we reacted to them the way we do to snakes and spiders. Alert attention without fear or aggression is probably the safest way to interact with such predators without provoking them—natural selection doesn’t care why we behave that way, as long as we do it.
That’s a very good point! So that crazy desire to try and give a bear a cuddlewuddle isn’t just a crazy deathwish, it might actually confuse the beast so much that he doesn’t try to eat you!