Every time a cuddly kitten, puppy or duckling appears on the TV I hear Oos and Aahs for the women in my house hold.
But the question is why?
I can see that logically our nurturing of small cuddly things played a major part in our domestication of all sorts of animals including dogs cats chickens, ducks, sheep and goats.
We also tend to anthropomorphise animals and imbibe them with intelligence and character they don’t really have.
Perhaps it played a part in the domestication of larger animals such as horses, lamas, elephants and cattle as well.
Today it has a negative impact as people attempt to domesticate rare species such as the Slow Lorris which doesn’t survive well in captivity. In fact this may lead to its extinction (and it has a highly toxic bite).
But human babies aren’t covered with fur, so what’s going on?
Could it be that in the distant past, perhaps a million years ago, our new borns were furry, and that the instinct to nurture cuddly things remains despite the loss of most of our fur?
If this is the case it would explain why our species has been so successful in domestication other species.
So why don’t we see this in other species? The answer may be that other great apes have retained their fur and their young are furry. So they feel fully sated by holding a young member of their own species and don’t need to go looking for other species to experience this powerful emotion.
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