A friend and I (both guys, as if that matters) were driving through the countryside and passed a herd of cows standing close to the road. As we passed the cows, he turned to me and commented that the one nearest us ‘had pretty eyes’. The strangest thing was that I had exactly the same thought!
Which got me thinking. I know that humans are hardwired to find certain facial features ‘attractive’, for example, facial symmetry, large eyes, high cheekbones, etc. Is it possible for this programming also to find certain animals attractive in the same way?
in case you were wondering, neither of us is from New Zealand, Scotland, or Arkansas. :dubious:
Most mammals are hardwired to find the same characteristics ‘cute:’ heads, eyes large relative to the size of the body, fuzziness, etc. They are infantile characteristics, and it’s my belief that this is why so many dogs, for example, are “good with children.”
On the other hand, Alan Dean Foster wrote a fantasy book (I think it was Spellsinger, but I can’t swear to it) in which an ermine (I think - it was a long time ago - some member of the weasel family anyway) does a striptease. It was so hot that even I, a straight woman, could sense it a bit.
But certainly many cows have lovely eyes. I’ve thought that many times. Also camels, llamas, and giraffes.
Well, I have three cats, of which Dewey is the prettiest. The other two are kinda funny looking. Edison’s head is too small, and Stokie has kind of a monkey face.
When it comes to dogs, I think those Chinese Crested things are ugly as homemade sin. I mean, it isn’t their fault, but there you go.
There are also entire groups of animals that are “so ugly they’re cute”. Manatees, naked mole rats, etc.
It’s worth noting that “making cow eyes” is a metaphor for flirtation. They’re large, with lashes, and expressive enough that we can imagine that they are somehow soulful.
It’s not that its eyes evoke actual attraction in humans (well, not most humans ), but rather that they remind a human of elements that he or she likely finds attractive in other humans’ eyes.
Aw, stop talking about me; you’re making me blush!
I find both of my cats to be pretty damn beautiful, and they really are, but my dog (Jack Russell/Beagle mix–sounds like maybe Mr. Russell was a dog fancier indeed…) is just funny-looking. She’s cute as hell in a way, but her head is too big for her body, and she always has one ear up and one ear down. She’s just goofy, but the kittyboys are sleek and svelte, and just some all-around good-looking gentlemen.
Well of course cows have nice eyes, but to really be attractive they need some lipstick, a touch of rouge and black silk underwear with red lace!
Just kidding…
Grew up on a farm… best thing I like on a cow is an ear tag. That means it is our’s and will bring us at least a few cents on the pound when we send it to cow heaven… err, the abbatoir,
Other than that my favorite thing on a cow is BBQ sauce…
Yes, that was Spellsinger, but I don’t remember the performer’s precise species.
One thing that should be kept in mind is that there are many different types of attractiveness. Most humans (indeed most mammals) find babies “cute”, but most humans do not find babies sexy. And I think that the way that the great cats, for instance, are admired is a different sense of “beauty” than either of those.
There’s a famous essay by Stephen Jay Gould about how Mickey Mouse is “cute” because he’s neotenous – he has babylike characteristics, from his large head and eyes to the relatively small size of his body, and that pet dogs and cats often have (are, in the case of lap dogs, bred to have) the same characteristics. The same features show up in other things we’tre meant to find cute – ET, with those uversized blue eyes, and his undersized body. Wall-E and the robot from Short Circuit (as was pointed out in recent threads), with those oversized expressive eyes. I personally think that Gould missed the bopat by failing to note the most neotenous cartoon character – Elmer Fudd, who LOOKS like a baby, even, right down to the bald head and the baby lisp*
Animals can shatre these characterists, as noted, but it’s not “sexy”, although we do respond to them. Some features DO resemble sexy ones – “eyelashes like a gazelle” (or, in some places, “…like a camel’s”). I’ve seen caricatures of animals with sexy human features – pouty lips, for instance, or an exaggerated hourglass figure – that look sexy. And, if we’re “proghrammed” to respond to them in humans, I think we’ll respond to them in animals. But only insofar as they resemble desirable human features. I don’t really think we respond well to animal sexiness. In the first place, we’re set to respond to human sexiness, and the animals are set to respond to their own species’ sexiness, and there doesn’t seem to be much overlap. That may be a ploy by evolution, for all I know (I could see it easily enough – species that differ enough from close relations will successfully propagate their kind; those that don’t will unsuccessfgully try to mate with the wrong species and this won;t have offspring). I do know that I don’t see anythuing at al attractive about bonobos, our closest relatives in the animal world.
*Try not to think of Elmer Fudd singing “Climb Every Mountain” from The Sound of Music. Try!
Now I’ve really ruined the day for several of you.
I remember an interview with Michael Eavis (who runs the Glastonbury Festival on his farm in Somerset) where he said that in the early days, when they came across an really freaked-out acid casualty, they used to help them up to the byre where the cows were temporarily kept, and sit the tripper down on a hay bale and let them stare at the warm, friendly eyes of a cow that was quite happily standing there and munching away. Now I’m sure that the attractiveness of the cow was never key to this, but I can imagine that being a warm and calming place to be. At any rate a cows eyes are a more soothing thing to lose oneself in than the noisy chaos of the Festival itself.
It depends somewhat on what you mean by “attractive”. Certainly most humans are capable of being aesthetically attracted to some animals, as attested by tons of artwork from all genres. Probably the most common theme would be equine art. Is there an extent to which our attraction to animals is aesthetic rather than sexual?
Obviously some people do find animals attractive in the latter sense, whether we’re talking about outright bestiality or something more like “furries”. I suppose the question is whether (or how much) the average individual is sexually attracted to animals. I would argue that - to some extent - probably everyone is, if only on an unconscious level. There is plenty of evidence for this in our language. If you’ll excuse the expressions, we have phrases like “sex kitten”, or we might say that someone is “a tiger in the sack”, or “hung like a bull”. To an extent, some of these are simple metaphors (tigers are nimble and aggressive, bulls are just…big), but they probably reveal a certain degree of sexual attraction. As well, human-animal hybrids are a very common theme in all manner of mythologies – centaurs, satyrs, merfolk, minotaurs, harpies, and even fairies just to name a few from European mythologies. The commonness of the theme suggests that an awful lot of people have thought about the subject, if nothing else. Some degree of sexual attraction to animals is probably far more common than we might think.
I suppose that shouldn’t be terribly surprising, though. In nature, natural hybridization between species is certainly not unheard of. Granted, hybridization necessarily involves to species that are not terribly differentiated, but at least a few examples of interfamilial hybrids exist. I don’t believe there are any known hybrids at the interphylum level (or higher), but that hasn’t stopped animals from occasionally trying – whence the seal attempting to mate with a penguin. I’m pretty sure there was a thread about that here not too long ago.
), but rather that they remind a human of elements that he or she likely finds attractive in other humans’ eyes.
not too long ago.