Cuteness as a Survival Trait

We have a rooster, that has evaded death more times than I can count. How, you may ask? It is not the most cunning of birds, nor is it the most brave. Instead, this rooster is ... 

Gorgeous. 

This is how the bird has evaded death, many, many, many times. Seriously, this rooster is, literally, too pretty to eat. Any time, my family broached the topic of eating the poor bird, it stops as quickly as it began. We take one look at the thing, and we are struck by its beauty. This is weird because, after all, we are talking about a chicken. Not a puppy, or a kitten or even a cow. But a beautiful, oddly photogenic chicken. 

Just. LOOK. AT. HIM. 

We tried to eat him over Christmas, but his beauty confused us. We tried again in the New Year, but his brilliance astounded us. 

We pretended to try over Easter, but instead, we brought him some friends (hens). 

THIS ROOSTER IS SO CUTE! So cute that he has triggered my cuteness aggression response. So cute, that it got me wondering if cuteness is an exceptional survival trait. 

Perhaps, in a world where we (humanity) play a large role in determining the survival of the species, animals don't need to be the strongest or the fastest. 

Perhaps they need to be the cutest? If not, the most useful?

Cute enough to activate the parts of our brains that yearn to protect cute things because they remind us of our children. 

After all, isn't this why dogs outnumber wolves? and domesticated cats outnumber their wild ancestors? Or why we all came together to save the Panda? As Benji Jones explains for Vox:

What makes animals like the panda so popular? Maybe it’s their looks, their striking appearance, cute and fearsome all at once. Pandas also exploit our parenting instincts. Cubs have round faces with big cheeks, and they tumble about like helpless toddlers. (We also tend to like what we can relate to. Fellow mammals with arms? Sure. Freshwater mussels? Not so much.)

This doesn't mean the theory always holds. Cows and goats are cute, but nobody is really rushing to keep them alive. However, I do know of families who kept specific cows away from the butcher's block because they were cute and had formed a relationship with the animal. I also know of goats that were saved from the carnage because they did something cute and activated our parental instincts. I mean not everyone understood why the goat was still alive, and kept referring to her as meat (which I don't think she heard, thankfully). But that didn't matter because she's still alive now. 

It seems that cuteness is more a reason to save a thing. In that, it functions as a stay of execution to a, literal, dead animal walking. 

But what does this mean? Well first, this is hardly news. We know that more resources are dedicated to helping pretty people - or people who are considered conventionally attractive. Is it right? No. But does it happen? Yes. Yes it does. It's called pretty privilege. 

In fact, Toni Morrison wrote an entire book dissecting the impact of pretty privilege on a young, black girl whom everyone deems ugly. It's called The Bluest Eye and in it, Pecola is abandoned because she is ugly, poor and black. Each of these qualities feeds upon and reinforces the other like an ouroboros of despair. In this way, Morrison explores what happens if you are not considered cute. If you are denied the affection and protections that quality affords you. The vision she paints is harrowing, but unfortunately familiar for too many of us.  By the end of the book, Pecola absorbs her community's ugliness, in order to ensure that community's very survival. For as long as everyone can point to her and demean her, then they know that they are better. 

“All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength."

Her ugliness allowed them to be cute, by comparison. Allowed them to better. Afforded them the strength they needed to survive. 

That's the interesting thing about cuteness. 

Oftentimes, something is cute, because we know what "ugly" means and looks like. And we always, justify our horrible treatment of things because they are ugly or not pleasing. Or perhaps they have done ugly things.

For example, with our rooster, his cuteness is only highlighted by the banality of his new friends. Hens which we are quick to disregard and treat as mere animals; without the semblance of reverence we reserve for our rooster. What's funny, is that we have no desire to form a relationship with him or to train him to become our pet. But we don't want him to die either...

So we are content to let him live out the rest of his days on our compound... 

Simply because he is cute... and therefore, somehow worthy of more.

But honestly, look at him? Is any other outcome acceptable?