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.

  • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠
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    8912 hours ago

    We’re predators ourselves, so if we couldn’t find predatory aspects (large, forward-facing eyes, for example) to be cute our babies would get left on hillsides.

    • @Fondots
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      109 hours ago

      It’s not something I’d generally consider to be one of my kinks, but I remember one time noticing a girl I know has somewhat more prominent than average canine teeth. Not ridiculously exaggerated vampire fangs or anything, definitely within the range of normal variation of the human species, but towards the upper end of that range, just a tiny bit longer and pointier than most.

      And that did something for me. Like the primal reptilian part of my brain was saying “yesss, now there’s a female you can go and hunt mammoths with”

      It surely didn’t hurt that she is otherwise very conventionally attractive, but in that moment it wasn’t the great tits, ass, pretty face, blue eyes, long blonde hair, etc. that caught my eye, it was those carnivore teeth.

      She’s also been an on-again/off-again vegetarian as long as I’ve known her, and has expressed some interest in hunting, so I think her own lizard-brain also seems to have some strong thoughts on the matter.

      • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠
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        15 hours ago

        I discovered this about myself fairly recently, but I’m never really attracted to a woman unless I’m also at least a little bit scared of her.

      • @[email protected]
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        89 hours ago

        on the opposite end of the scale, ive always found buckteeth super adorable. Like, cmon little beaver creature, let’s find you a piece of wood to chew on and cuddle

    • @ThatWeirdGuy1001OP
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      1411 hours ago

      “Where’s the baby!?”

      “Gone. Reduced to atoms.”

      Still kinda wild to me that our preservation instincts can be overridden by something that doesn’t resemble a human in any way outside of a few features.

      • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠
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        810 hours ago

        It’s because they evolved to hack our brains, and our brains evolved to be hacked by their smells / sounds / features. ‘Natural selection for reproductive fitness’ is a harsh mistress.

      • @[email protected]
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        49 hours ago

        To be fair, our ancestors, evolutionary speaking, didnt resemble us that much if you go back far enough. A system that just considers a few key features a “child to be protected” is probably more adaptable than if every change in appearance had to be accompanied with a corresponding mutation to whatever gives us our mental picture of what our young should look like, for them to still get taken care of.

        • @ThatWeirdGuy1001OP
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          19 hours ago

          It wouldn’t take any evolutionary change to notice your offspring look nothing like you especially if they were completely different colors and had drastically different features.