Cute Babies

In the 1940s, the historically questionable Austrian ethologist named Konrad Lorenz set out to expose the mystery of cuteness. He looked at babies from all over the animal kingdom, and came to one conclusion - the Kindchenschema or "baby schema". According to Lorenz, there are a set of features that our brains read as CUTE! These include a large, rounded head, a big forehead, large eyes, chubby cheeks, a rounded body, and soft, elastic skin. Evolutionary biologists working on Lorenz's 'baby schema' thought that these "cute" traits and our response to seeing cute babies might have an evolutionary purpose. To see whether the 'baby schema' was really necessary to make something cute, in 2009, a group of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania showed 122 undergraduates pictures of babies and then asked them to rate the cuteness of the babies and how motivated the students would be to care for the baby. The researchers manipulated the baby faces so that some followed the 'baby schema' more closely than others. They found that those baby's faces that MATCHED the schema were rated as cuter than those who didn't. Furthermore, the subjects were more inclined to care for infants that were rated as cuter. Our need to care for our cute infants gives them a better chance of surviving to a reproducible age. Without adults caring for infants, especially in those species whose infants take longer to become self-sufficient, such as human beings, the survival chances of the species would be bleak.