Self Select Yourselves Now or Be Vanquished

The New York Times, the un-cutest paper, gives us a story today on what scientists say we think is “cute”:

“The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.”

Nyet to the caterpillars, certainly not “a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock,” and absolutely no, never, on “a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.”

If you do find any of those things actually cute, you’re reading the wrong blog.

(But bravo to Natalie Angier for her description of a “cute” manatee: it “looks like an overfertilized potato with a sock puppet's face…”)