Found a pair of videos from an eagle nest cam. Their local GHO is not a fan of having their type in the neighborhood and expresses its concerns in the way owls do.
To be fair, the eagles likely return the favor during the daylight.
I’m not sure how long the actual history is, the most widely accepted theory was first proposed by Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz in the 1940s. He called it baby schema which basically state that we find certain features of human babys cute which in turn motivates us to take care of them.
Certain aspects of infants like big eyes, can be found in most animals we traditionally deemed cute. For example domestic dogs have “poppy dog eyes” which is entirely absence from wild wolfs, meaning we likely unintentionally bred them to display them since we like it.
I didn’t find much from Lorenz about owls specifically, though there was some very interesting stuff about imprinting.
There did seem to be a number of mentions of baby schema in the articles talking about Flaco capturing the hearts of so many. Owls would seem to fit very well, with their big round heads and bodies and large eyes.
I was being a bit more simplistic, by meaning we can find them cute as they don’t present a danger to us, but you’ve given me some more to think about.
I bet there’s a lot of history on why we really only find small animals cute and cuddly!
Heck, Barred Owls will still try to do to us what this GHO is doing to the eagles!
I’m not sure how long the actual history is, the most widely accepted theory was first proposed by Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz in the 1940s. He called it baby schema which basically state that we find certain features of human babys cute which in turn motivates us to take care of them.
Certain aspects of infants like big eyes, can be found in most animals we traditionally deemed cute. For example domestic dogs have “poppy dog eyes” which is entirely absence from wild wolfs, meaning we likely unintentionally bred them to display them since we like it.
I didn’t find much from Lorenz about owls specifically, though there was some very interesting stuff about imprinting.
There did seem to be a number of mentions of baby schema in the articles talking about Flaco capturing the hearts of so many. Owls would seem to fit very well, with their big round heads and bodies and large eyes.
I was being a bit more simplistic, by meaning we can find them cute as they don’t present a danger to us, but you’ve given me some more to think about.