It turns out we humans are wired for cuteness. Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have discovered that there are cute cues: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among others. When we see these cues, which indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, we respond to them with tenderness and delight.

It’s a good thing, too, since these are the visual signals of infants and small children. Their very survival is dependent on our draw to them in a positive, nurturing way. The human cuteness sensor is set so sensitively that it deems cute almost anything resembling a human baby. The greater number of cute cues, the more we squeeze, hold, or pet the object of our new affection.

New studies suggest that cute images stimulate the same pleasure centers of the brain aroused by sex, a good meal or psychoactive drugs like cocaine.

Cuteness is distinct from beauty, which attracts admiration and a pedestal. Cuteness attracts affection and a lap. Says Dr. Denis Dutton, a philosopher of art at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, “Cute cuts through all layers of meaning and says, ‘Let’s not worry about complexity, just love me.’”

But love, unlike attraction, is complex. How do we love that which is ugly, deformed, ill, and in need of us as much or more than the adorable objects of our affection?

Humanitarian and author Jean Vanier has devoted his life to those considered difficult to love—the “mentally poor and those who are marginal in our society...” He is founder of the international organization, L’arche (French, for The Ark), 130 community homes around the world where persons with disabilities can reside and share their lives with those who care for them.

Vanier writes, “To be human is that capacity to love, which is the phenomenal reality that we give to people; we can transform people by our attentiveness, by our love, and they transform us. It is a whole question of giving life and receiving life, but also to discover how broken we are.”

Maybe animals also can teach us something about how to love. “No person is too old or ugly or poor or disabled to win the love of a pet—they love us uncritically and without reserve,” writes Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, in the Foreword to Between Pets and People, by Alan Beck and Aaron Katcher.

In the book, they tell of Sonny, a 19-year-old psychotic, who spent most of his time lying in bed. A psychiatrist brought the dog, Arwyn, a wired-haired fox terrier, to Sonny’s bed. Sonny raised himself up on one elbow and gave a big smile to the dog’s wildly friendly greeting. The dog jumped on Sonny, licking his face and ears. Sonny tumbled the dog about joyously. He volunteered his first question: “Where can I keep him?”

© 2006 HealthNewsDigest.com