A Brief Dissertation on the Nature of Cute
Cute is, arguably, a function of the ratio of the size of a creature's eyes to the size of its head, compounded by the tilt of the head in relation to the line of the body. Consider human infants. They generally have large eyes relative to the size of their heads. They are designed to be seen as cute, and human adults are genetically programmed to see them as cute. Consider snakes and reptiles. They generally have very small eyes in relation to the size of their heads. Which do you think of as cute and cuddly, snakes or babies? All right, maybe you do, but most of us prefer the babies or, in my case, their mothers (see photo ).
Anyway, try to bear this in mind as you peruse the cute critters on the previous page. You may notice one exception: a cute little blue-eyed crab. It doesn't really have a head as such, and its eyes are kind of small in relation to what its head would be, had it one. So, if there is an exception to every rule, this is the exception that makes the rule.