During the government shutdown, many government programs were put on hold, some that felt important to the function of the US, and some much less so. One of the casualties of the shutdown was the famous Smithsonian Giant Panda Cam.  The black and white creatures had captured the hearts of many Americans, and when the Panda Cams were disabled it certainly did not go unnoticed.  The lack of the Panda Cam and the upset it caused made it obvious that people love the pandas, probably because they are a cute work-time distraction.

The love of the pandas begs the question: what is so captivating about these pandas? Why do we love watching their round black and white faces on the screen of our computer? Why do we love cute so much?

There are many hypotheses as to why people respond so strongly to “cute images” such as baby animals and small creatures with big eyes. One of the most popular ideas is that its pure genetics that have programmed people to respond so strongly to what they deem as cute. Science reporter and video blogger for The Huffington Post, Cara Santa Maria explains in her video, The Science Of Cute: Is Pedomorphism Why We Gush Over ‘Adorable’ Things? that “Evolutionary biologists say baby animals trigger the same protective mechanism in us that human babies do. We love babies’ big ol’ eyes and funny lollipop heads. They make them look vulnerable and precious and needy.” This means that we respond to the “cute factors” of baby animals in a way that is highly similar to how we respond to humans’ cuter features.

Cara Santa Maria continues to explain that humans are, of course, programmed to care for their own babies, and these babies often have larger heads.  She reports, “See, we humans have disproportionately large brains, compared to other mammals. And a lot of our brain development occurs before we’re even born, hence, big bobble-headed babies.” Another feature of human babies are their disproportionately large eyes.

It is these features, larger eyes and big heads, which humans find cute. We find them so because they are features that appear on human babies, and we are programmed to love, take care of, and protect these human babies.  It is hypothesized that animal babies and animal cuteness awaken these more caring and maternal instincts as well.

However, some scientists note that seeing cuteness brings out a certain amount of aggressiveness in people, and can make them feel “out of control.” These aggressive feelings are verbalized often in common phrases such as, “ I just want to squeeze something” or the more common “ I could just eat it up!”

Senior writer for LiveScience Stephanie Pappas says that aggressive reactions to cuteness are more than just verbal exclamations. In a study done in early January of 2013 at the annual meeting of The Society for Personality and Social Psychology, more knowledge about people’s reaction to cute was examined.

Two Yale  graduates, Rebecca Dyer and Oriana Aragon, developed a study to further explore this phenomenon. This study involved, as Pappas explained, recruiting “109 participants online to look at pictures of cute, funny or neutral animals. A cute animal might be a fluffy puppy, while a funny animal could be a dog with its head out a car window, jowls flapping. A neutral animal might be an older dog with a serious expression.” The participants were asked to rate the pictures on how cute they found them, and how much the pictures made them feel like they were going to “lose control.”

The study results showed that the cuter the animal was found to be the more the picture was reported to make people want to squeeze something.

The experiment did not end there. Dyer and Aragon asked 90 male and 90 female volunteers to come into a lab and watch a slide show of furry friends, again either cute, funny, or neutral.  The participants were then given sheets of bubble wrap and told to pop the bubble wrap as they pleased. They could pop as many or as few as they wanted, as long as they were doing some level of popping.

Pappas says that the goal was for the research was to see “if people would respond to cute animals with an outward display of aggression, popping more bubbles, compared with people looking at neutral or funny animals.”

Surprisingly this turned out to be exactly what the results showed. Participants how watched the slideshow of cute animals popped an average of 120 bubbles, while the neutral and funny popped 100 and 80 on average respectively.

These researchers are still unsure why exactly the cuteness of small critters seems to make people feel like they are “loosing control,” or “want to squish something.”

Overall, cuteness does trigger something in people, weather it is a caring and maternal instinct, or aggression.  Maybe if we keep watching the Panda Cam, we will figure it out.