Cuteness As Crack

Jim Windolf explores the science behind adorable animals:

“It’s part of our DNA to react to cute things,” says Meg Frost, who founded Cute Overload in 2005. “What makes me post certain pictures is if I have an audible reactiona squealwhen I see the picture. I’m kind of annoyed at myself for having no control over thinking these things are so cute. [...]

Specifically, [biologist Melanie] Glocker’s series of experiments demonstrated that the act of looking at baby pictures stirs up an ancient part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. “It’s in the midbrain,” Glocker says, with a slight Teutonic accent, “which is an evolutionarily older part of the brain involved in reward processing. This region has also been shown to be activated by a variety of rewarding stimuli, including sexual stimuli, food stimuli, and drug stimuli.” Dr. Glocker is too much of a scientist to say so, but her experiments more or less prove that cuteness is physically addicting.

FU Penguin fights the urge to cuddle with the cute dog above:

This dog's name is Snapdragon, which not coincidentally is the PERFECT FUCKING NAME for this Muppet-looking motherfucker. I was sent in this picture by a person pretending to be the owner, but honestly is there any possible way this is a real dog? And if it is a real dog, it should be taken away because it is clearly fucking out of its mind high. THERE IS NO WAY I'M COMING TO SIT ON THAT COUCH WITH YOU, DOG. I don't care how many episodes of Planet Earth you have cued up.