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Why do people can't help but think kittens are cute?

These days, who does not have an immortal kitten / handsome puppy, I also have a social science gentleman (no matter, Yunyang also counts! )

Sucking cats and stroking dogs has become a daily practice among contemporary young people. In addition to keeping cats and dogs, humans also like rabbits, parrots and pigeons. (social Science Jun recently became infatuated with the panda Menglan.)

The companionship of animals always makes us smile involuntarily and warm every moment of your life.

In intimacy, British zoologist Desmond Morris records the frequency of intimate contact between westerners and pets in the 1970s:

There are 90 million cats and dogs in the United States, with as many as 10,000 kittens and puppies born every hour; France has 16 million dogs; Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) has 8 million dogs; and Britain has 5 million dogs. There are no statistics on the exact number of cats, but there must be as many cats as dogs, maybe more.

Adding up these figures, it can be said that there are about 150 million dogs and cats in these four countries. To make another estimate, assuming that the owners of these pets touch, pat or hug three times a day on average, the intimacy with the pet is 1000 times a year. Adding up these figures, they have 15 billion intimate contact with their pets each year.

Why do humans like to be in close contact with animals? Does intimacy with animals mean the failure of intimate communication between people in modern society? What is the nature of close contact between people and animals? Why do we often pat dogs and pet cats instead of dogs and cats?

Morris answers these questions one by one in the book.

From "intimacy", abridged

By Desmond Morris

He Daokuan's translation

Animals can meet people's unmet intimacy needs. We pat on the back when we hug, we stroke the hair of lovers or children, and touch their skin. But it is clear that we do not get enough intimate contact, as evidenced by the billions of intimate contacts we have with our pets. Our contact with people is hampered by cultural limitations, so we turn intimacy to cute pets, which are substitutes for the intimacy we show love.

The adult world is a world of stress and strangers. In this world, we seek the intimate comfort of our loved ones. But for a variety of reasons, they may not respond to our desires; whether out of apathy or the complexities of being busy with modern livelihoods, we are in a dangerous predicament that lacks the basic soothing function of physical contact.

If our desire for intimacy is not satisfied, we feel lonely. However, human beings are a creative species, and if we are deprived of what we desperately need, our creative spirit will soon drive us to find alternatives.

Bob the stray cat stills if we can't get love at home, we will go outside to find love. The neglected wife will find a lover, the husband will also find a lover, and physical intimacy will bloom again. Unfortunately, such an alternative does not always enhance the remaining intimacy of the family, but will compete with the remaining warmth for territory, and may eventually replace the warmth of the family, causing varying degrees of social damage.

A less destructive option is licensed body touch by professionals. Professional touch has one advantage: they do not compete with the intimacy of their families. As long as strict business ethics are observed, the close contact of the masseuse cannot be used as a reason for divorce.

However, even a professional masseuse, no matter how justified her public excuses, is psychologically an adult and must be seen as a potential sexual threat. the threat of "seeing" is rarely talked about publicly and is usually only mentioned in jokes. On the contrary, society is trying to impose more and more restrictions on the nature and environment of the intimate contact of such professionals. First of all, society rarely publicly recognizes this kind of intimate contact.

Stills of "the Mission of a Dog" Dance is not to touch, but to "have fun"; to see a doctor for treatment, not to seek comfort; and to get a haircut for styling, not for a barber to touch his head. Of course, these public functions are all reasonable and important.

There must be these functions to cover up another simultaneous phenomenon: the search for friendly physical contact. Once publicly declared functions are no longer important, unmet hidden needs are exposed, so we must ask basic questions to torture our way of life and ask for answers. don't wait for the passive situation where you are forced to consider these answers.

However, unwittingly, we all realize that we are playing games, so we indirectly bind the hands that can touch us. We use routines and codes of conduct to allay our sexual concerns. We don't usually say why.

We directly accept the abstract rules of elegant etiquette and warn each other what is "impossible" or "inappropriate". It is rude to point at someone with your finger, and it is even more rude to touch someone with your hand; it is impolite to show your feelings.

Stills of "the Mission of a Dog" so what do we turn to to solve?

The answer is gentle and lovely, just like the kitten on your knee. So we turned to other animals. If close friends can't meet our needs, and if intimate contact with strangers is too dangerous, we can go to a nearby pet store and buy close contact with pets for a small amount of money.

Pet innocence, will not bring problems, will not ask questions. They lick our hands, rub our legs, curl up and sleep near our legs. They sniff us with their noses. We can caress them, touch them, pat them, hug them like babies, scratch their ears, or even kiss them.

Bob the stray cat stills that animals do not threaten interpersonal intimacy. The public's love of pets has been severely criticized by some people. One writer called it a "pet fetish", denouncing it as a reflection of the depravity of modern life and that the intimacy of civilized people had failed. Critics in particular stress that more money is spent on preventing animal abuse than on child abuse. Pet lovers' answers to critics were denounced as illogical and hypocritical.

Some people think that keeping pets can help us understand the way animals live, but this view is considered absurd because our relationship with pets all seems to make animals mimic human images. They are "improved" as human beings, as furry people, and not as real animals at all.

Some people say that animals are innocent and helpless and need our help. Critics argue that this view is very one-sided in an era when babies are abused and farmers are badly hit. We tolerate 1 million children being slaughtered or injured in the war, while providing professional care for cats and dogs and sending them to pet hospitals as soon as they are needed-in our enlightened times, how can we tolerate that?

In the 20th century, how to explain the comparison that we authorized our men to kill 100 million of their own kind in war, while spending hundreds of millions of dollars more and more to feed their pets and give them a life of luxury? In short, we are more kind to other animals than to our own kind. What is this all about?

The "sugar cube" stills are powerful and cannot be ignored rashly, but they have a major flaw. To put it simply, our answer is the same in ancient and modern times: we must not overcorrect it. There is no doubt that caring for pets and ignoring children is a terrible mistake, and in extreme cases, this heinous sin does occur. But it is foolish to use this mistake as a basis for opposing pet fondling.

Even in extreme cases, it is doubtful whether pets can "steal" the favor a child deserves. If the child is not loved by his parents because of neurosis, can the situation be improved without a pet? This is also suspicious.

In almost all cases, pets are another source of intimacy or a substitute for lack of intimacy. It is totally untenable to say that more care for animals will inevitably lead to less care for human beings.

Assuming that a strange disease wipes out all pets tomorrow, effectively eliminating millions of intimate contact between them and their owners, where does all caring go? Will we redirect our care to our peers?

Unfortunately, the answer is not necessarily. The only consequence is that millions of lonely people lose an important form of warm physical contact; for a variety of reasons, these lonely people do not receive real kindness.

An old lady who is used to getting along with her pet cat day and night will not transfer her pet pet touch to the postman; a man who is used to patting his pet dog is less likely to transfer his pet pet to his teenage son.

It is true that in an ideal society, we do not need such a substitute, nor do we need to increase the channels of release for our intimacy. But if it is recommended that pets be banned, it will be a temporary cure rather than a permanent cure.

Even in an ideal society full of love and unrestrained intimacy, we may always be able to leave a lot of time to make out with pets, not because we need such intimacy, but because they can make our lives more enjoyable, and pets don't compete with us for intimate relationships.

Finally, we say one more word to defend our pets. If we can be kind to our pets, it at least shows that we can express such tenderness.

But what does it prove that even the officers in the concentration camp are kind to their wolf dogs, the retorts say? The simple answer is that even the cruelest people can show some tenderness. Of course, they are ruthless, cruel and cruel at the same time, they hurt us deeply, and their cruelty is even more frightening, but such a duality cannot make us turn a blind eye to the facts.

The stills of "the Mission of a Dog" often remind us that human beings have the great potential of natural tenderness and intimacy without being distorted and before showing the contradiction of "civilized barbarism". This is our fundamental nature.

Witnessing the warm and friendly touch between pet owners and pets reminds us that people are essentially loving and affectionate animals-even this is enough to teach us valuable lessons. This is a lesson that we need to learn and relearn, and it is particularly important in an increasingly indifferent world.

When people become cruel under pressure, we need to gather all the evidence to prove that this is not the inevitable result. In other words, cruelty is not human nature. If our ability to love pets proves one aspect of human love, well-intentioned critics must think twice before attacking human cruelty, no matter how unreasonable the pet-loving view may be in some ways.

The body of an animal is a substitute for the human body. What is the nature of the intimate contact between the human and the animal? For example, why do we pat dogs and pet cats, but seldom touch dogs and cats? Why is it that one kind of animal attracts one kind of intimate contact, while another kind of animal attracts another kind of intimate contact?

In order to answer this question, we have to look at the structural characteristics of these animals. Of course, their roles as pets are human substitutes, and their bodies are human substitutes. However, their physical structural characteristics are very different.

The dog's legs are too stiff to hug us, and we can't hug the cat with open arms. Even the largest cat is no bigger than a baby, its body is soft and flexible, and we can adjust the cuddling of the cat accordingly.

The stills of "stray cat Bob" start with dogs. As our lovely companion, we need to hug him, but his stiff legs make it difficult for us to hug him, so we extract the elements of slapping from the symbolic action of hugging-slapping on the back and use it directly for intimacy with the dog. We reach out and pat it on the back, head or waist and abdomen. The large dog has a broad and strong back, making it an ideal substitute for slapping people on the back.

The situation of cats is very different. It is small and soft, so it is not an ideal substitute for slapping people on the back. Its silky body hair feels like human hair. Because we stroke the hair of our sweetheart, naturally we tend to touch the long hair of the cat. Just as a dog is an ideal stand-in for human back, a cat is an ideal substitute for human hair. In fact, we often think of the whole body of a cat as a head with long hair.

Extending this view slightly, we can think that slapping is our natural intimacy with all dogs, while stroking is our typical intimacy with all cats, but the situation is not so simple. Our movements have a lot to do with the typical figure of dogs and cats.

Anyone who has had a strange experience of intimate contact with domesticated cheetahs, lions or tigers is well aware that we have different patterns of intimate contact with them. Although they are all real cats, their broad and sturdy backs remind us of domestic dogs rather than domestic cats. Like a typical domestic dog, the fur of these three "big cats" is thick and stiff. As a result, we pat them instead of stroking them. By contrast, small long-haired lions and dogs have long hair, so we pet and hug them like cats.

Walking up the size ladder, we see that people who like horses also use the intimate action of slapping, but there is a subtle change in the way of slapping. The origin of the slapping movement is the human back, the human back is vertical, while the horse's back is horizontal, so it is not very satisfactory as a substitute for the human back. But the neck of the horse makes up for this deficiency, its height is appropriate, and it is also an ideal vertical plane, where most of the flattering movements are carried out.

In this respect, horses are better than dogs because their necks are too short to be slapped. In addition, the height of the horse makes its head an ideal place for intimate movements. On the contrary, the head position of the dog is low, and if we want to slap, we have to lower the body position or hold the dog up. We see that many horse lovers put their heads on the neck or face of the horse, hug or pat the horse on the neck or head.

For many people, pets are not only a substitute for ordinary companions, but also a stand-in for children. Here, the size of the animal becomes an important issue. There is nothing wrong with domestic cats, but typical domestic dogs are too big, so some breeds of domestic dogs are gradually reduced by breeding until they are as big as babies. In this way, small domestic dogs are as big as rabbits or monkeys, and we can hold them in our arms so that fake parents don't have too much effort when they hold their pets. As far as pets are concerned, this is the most popular form of physical contact between owners and them.

The analysis of a large number of photos of owners holding pets showed that similar gestures of holding babies were the most common (50%), followed by slapping (11%), followed by one-arm half-hugging (7%), followed by cheeks against the pet's body, usually close to the pet's neck. Another astonishing frequency of intimacy is mouth-to-mouth kissing, accounting for 5%, kissing animals ranging from budgerigars to whales.

You might think that whales may not be suitable for kissing people. Captain Ahab would be surprised if he heard the story of a little girl kissing the mouth of a whale, but the trend on display at the aquarium in recent years has changed that. Domesticated whales and their smaller relatives, dolphins, are the most popular kissing animals, and because their kisses are round, their foreheads bulge, and their heads look like babies' heads, when they stick out seemingly smiling faces from the pool, people can't help but want to touch, scratch and hug them.

Domesticated birds, such as parrots, budgerigars and pigeons, are often held up and pasted on their cheeks to get in touch with their soft, smooth feathers. Feeding them mouth-to-mouth makes their intimacy more intimate. Because the birds are small, there is no possibility of hugging and slapping, and the intimate movements of stroking are limited to finger strokes and scratches "behind their ears".

"intimate behavior"

By Desmond Morris, translated by he Daokuan

Publishing House: Shanghai Translation Publishing House

Publication date: April 2021

Content introduction

When you are a child, you snuggle in your mother's arms; when you fall in love, you cuddle your lover; when friends meet, you shake hands; when you feel lonely, you reach out and touch your dog; when you think silently, you hold your head unconsciously. Human beings have the instinct to seek intimacy, and when urban life suppresses intimacy, there are all kinds of alternative behaviors: restless adults, looking for adults to pacify pacifiers-cigarettes; use comfortable and soft cloth to make mattresses instead of being held in the arms of your mother in childhood; cover your face with your hands to comfort yourself when you are scared.

From the perspective of animal behaviorists, Morris traces the pattern of human intimate behavior from the womb to the graveyard and traces back to the root of intimate behavior. The months before and after birth are when the seeds of intimacy are planted, he says.

A brief introduction to the author

Desmond Morris (Desmond Morris) is a famous British zoologist, biological anthropologist, popular science writer of biological evolution, TV program writer, host and artist. He has served as director of the Mammal Museum of London Zoo, director of the Institute of Modern Art, and special research fellow of Oxford University. Since the Naked Ape Trilogy, he has written more than a dozen works, which have been translated into many languages and have been sold for a long time.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: nonfiction time (ID:non-fiction702). By Morris.

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