Beyond cute

Most of us do it. We circulate photos and videos of cute animals — our own pets, wildlife encounters, found images: sneezing baby panda, Buttermilk Sky the Nigerian dwarf goat (who is also a bit of a jerk), and the persistent baby brown bear (which turns out to have a dark side).

I’ve definitely done it. Cute animals get the hearts and likes; easy currency in the online market of social approval. Mammals seem to be key.

There’s a reason why we traffic in such cuteness, and it is hard to begrudge it. But it is also problematic.

Cuteness is a different quality to beauty, which usually prompts admiration, awe and reverence. Our immediate response to cute is closer to fondness, affection, a tender attachment. We might feel nurturing or protective toward it. This is our evolutionary psychology at work.

We evolved to think that babies are cute, which in part secured our survival as a species. Charles Darwin had noted that there was something about human babies that makes parents more likely to look after them.

In 1949 the Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz devised what he called Kinderschema or ‘baby schema’, a set of characteristics that motivate bonding and caretaking. These include a round head, big eyes set low on a round face, big ears, small noses, soft body (or looks like it could be soft), awkward limbs or gait. The more cues, the cuter.

It is an extremely transferable aesthetic — which means that something that looks even remotely like this does things to our brain. Enter: kittens, puppies, assorted other baby mammals, or small- to medium-sized animals like possums. And it happens to both men and women, adults and children, and across cultures (with some variance in receptors, e.g. Japanese people seem to have high cultural reception).

What happens is that within a seventh of a second, the medial orbitofrontal cortex — implicated in emotion, pleasure, and reward behaviour — lights up; magnetic fields produced by naturally occurring electric currents in the brain activate. Dopamine, a ‘happy hormone’, is released.

This is where I think it gets problematic. Looking at images of cute animals is a bit like drugs.

I mean the hit itself is fine and patently safer than cocaine. I have seen how helpful it can be for people having a rough day to be sent a series of animal photos or gifs online. Such offerings/exchanges sometimes create a sense of community, and that is a rare, redemptive thing.

But in a time when scientists are anticipating the loss of a million plant and animal species, might that kind of high get in the way of drastic action?

I follow zoos and wildlife photographers on Instagram, mostly to learn/absorb all sorts of things (I’m currently undertaking related study), and also because every single creature carries something wondrous about them. They are all amazing.

But in taking in these images, I am also acutely aware of how they work like an opiate — not just that it feels good to look, but that they mask reality with a version in which life on Earth is permanently, sufficiently diverse. There is still colour, isn’t there? The birds are still here. All sorts of baby animals.

This cannot be simultaneously true with the facts. The biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 82 per cent. More than a third of land and nearly three-quarters of freshwater sources is directed to production of livestock and crops; cities have expanded at incredible pace. Forest, plains and other habitats have been and will continue to be cleared, polluted, or infested with introduced and invasive species (humans included).

In theory, the initial rapid brain activity prompted by cute is followed by a slower, sustained processing that taps a desire for caregiving (which nudges us to develop the required skill set). This is the ground that conscientious zoos, wildlife parks and sanctuaries tread when they educate/attempt to educate the public. The hope is that the evolutionary wiring that draws people to (cute) animals might lead to behaviours and choices that benefit those animals.

Here’s the thing. The mountain pygmy-possum is damn cute. The koala looks cuddly as all get out. Being cute hasn’t made either of these animals less threatened or endangered. The problem with cute is that it keeps us from registering the complex systems in which wildlife have evolved and which they need to survive.

For example: exceptionally dry conditions in New South Wales and Queensland where bogong moths breed have led to their population crashing. This does not bode well for the critically endangered mountain pygmy-possums (including in Victoria) that rely on them for food in the post-hibernation breeding/rearing period. It would not make sense to talk about saving the pygmy-possum without accounting for these conditions, including the causes that lie like a seam underneath it all.

Cute can get in the way of shifting priorities. Cats and rabbits are cute, but they have been some of the most lethal forces to Australian native wildlife. On the other hand, there are entire categories of life — frogs, bees, lizards, fish — that might not be regarded as cute but are critical for the systems in which cute lives. Then there are the kangaroos, probably the more ecologically sound source of protein on the continent than cattle. Could we convince people to eat cute?

Maybe the question is moot given that while we are happy to look at cute, images may well be all that we would have left if our attention can only be held that long. Or we could make something of that dopamine high, that tender impulse, and think in terms of systems rather than saving individual creatures. Because that is the only way to save them all.

The UN global assessment report on biodiversity points urgently to the institutional values that will make or break species. As David Obura, one of the authors says, ‘It is not too late if we put a huge amount into transformational behavioural change. This is fundamental to humanity. We are not just talking about nice species out there; this is our life-support system.’

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