Dogs are often described as man’s best friend. They are loyal, endearing, friendly and willing to go the extra mile for you. They can also be trained to do more useful tasks too, like guarding, or guiding, or even protecting. There’s a reason why many dogs are trained as personal protection dogs too, because they are smart enough to tell threats from friends, and stand their ground regardless. It’s also why a personal protection dog is so expensive, because they’re so well trained.
This one person, Jesse Jordan who describes himself as “Writer, Not Writer*” ran into quite the predicament when his dog, who is not a protection dog, got bribed by a random black bear with some deer bones for permission to steal and rummage through some trash. No, you didn’t hear that wrong, a bear was coy enough to realise that if he offered the dog some bones, the dog wouldn’t mind. And he didn’t. Animals are getting smarter and smarter by the day.
Source: Twitter
Rover answers the reason why we love our dogs so much!
Think about the naughtiest thing your dog ever did. For me, it’s the time my dog Ralph got into the kitchen cupboard while I was out and tossed a bag of flour all over the house. I was frustrated when I came home to a find flour ground into the carpet, but then Ralph looked up at me with those big, round eyes, flour dusting her adorable nose, her sweet, soft ears flopping over as she tilted her head…how could I stay mad at a face like that?
Cuteness. It’s what makes us squee over puppy pics and rush to forgive our pets for the occasional naughty misstep. But why are dogs so cute? What is it about man’s best friend that turns even the toughest tough guy into a babytalking fool every time his dog rolls over for a belly rub? It turns out the science of cute is fascinating stuff.
Even without a handy list of cuteness cues, most of us have an innate sense of what’s cute and what’s not. You look at a sweet, fluffy dog and you just know: that thing is cute. Or you might look at a snake and think: so not cute. Where the science of cute gets really interesting is when we start to consider why certain features tickle our squee response. It’s no accident that every cuteness cue is intrinsically tied to youthfulness and even helplessness.
It all goes back to human babies. As explained by Natalie Angier in the New York Times, the features of cuteness are those that express “extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need,” and those features elicit a nurturing response. In other words, stuff that reminds us of small, defenseless babies will trigger warm feelings that make us want to take care of whatever made us go “awww.”
The thing is, our brain doesn’t automatically know the difference between “human baby” and “vulnerable creature from another species.” If you look at a picture of a puppy and a baby, you’re going to feel the same warm, fuzzy feelings for both.
Our affinity for cute is an evolved biological response. Think about it: If we didn’t get all gooey over cute things, we wouldn’t take care of them and protect them, and our own species wouldn’t survive. We respond to cute cues because it’s in our very nature to nurture, whether our charge is our own offspring or our beloved, adorable dog.
What did you think? Did you find this as hilarious as we did? Tell us down in the comments!