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Randy Heath
Southington, Connecticut, US
Seals didn’t evolve to be cute for us – we evolved to appreciate them, just as we would any other critter with front-facing eyes.
Lions, tigers, bears – they all evolved to have front-facing eyes that humans relate to because it was an advantage to them, not to us. It is humans whose evolutionary programming led them to appreciate the gaze of an infant and, by extrapolation, the seeming eye contact of all these different species.
It is difficult to think of an animal with a face roughly similar to ours that isn’t cute as an infant, despite the fact that many of them would happily devour us given the opportunity.
To find one, I think you would have to move away from mammals and look instead at reptiles like snakes, alligators and crocodiles, though I am sure there are probably people who consider even these creatures cute as well.
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