49ers aren't going to the Superbowl...

Otter Plays with Boy

Babies The Documentary

The Orangutan and the Hound

Too cute.

Odie

Right back at you, Odie.

Puppy Cam

Stream videos at Ustream

Cat vs. Crawfish and The Unknown Rebel

Here's a cute video of a pet cat toying with a very well defended crawfish (and a disinterested dog in the background). I love the acoustic version of the Imperial March (Darth Vader's theme song in Star Wars).


The video reminded me of one of the heroes of the late 20th century, the Unknown Rebel.

Watch the video of the Unknown Rebel defying a fleet of tanks here. What do you do when you're staring down impossible odds? Very few choose to stand and fight.

Animal Couples

Aww jeez, I'm such a softy but I can't help myself. Check out this adorable photo set of couples in the animal kingdom.

Otters holding hands

This is so cute it makes my heart hurt.

Why do we find certain things cute?

Evolution, stupid.

Natalie Angier wrote a great article in the New York Times explaining why we humans are so darn susceptible to cuteness.

"Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: 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 many others.

Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can't lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.

The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession." :-)

Hmmm...I guess this explains why I find just about every baby mammal irresistably cute. I wonder if people who find things cute are more likely to have children than people who don't? And I wonder if people's attitudes change about cuteness change after they've had children? Science Fair project, anyone?

Fruit art

Saxton Freymann is a NYC artist who creates characters out of fruit. He claims that each fruit or vegetable has its own personality. Using the wrinkles and features of the fruit as his guide, Freymann uses a knife to carve out emotional animals out of the fruit.