Do people like watching cats because of neoteny? I doubt it, because adult cats don’t look at all like babies. But then why do we have this odd fascination with every ordinary action of a cat and treating them as instances of a Platonic Cat? I speculate that there may be an evolutionary psychology reason: cats in Africa prey on primates to a degree I suspect few people appreciate, and this seems to have been true for millions of years, making them our apex predator. So perhaps we are still slightly hardwired to closely observe cats, in a way we aren’t for most other potential pets. This accounts for the indefinable appeal of cats: they are paradoxically both pleasant and unpleasant, like horror movies.
The question has been bugging me as I read up on cats: why do we love them so much? They don’t look much like human babies, but we can’t seem to stop watching them. A cat is an event—a wild cat is exciting, and even a domestic cat suddenly freezing or walking along the road catches the eye in a way that a dog would not. People cross the road to go, “You’re a kitty!” (even people who already have cats, or who will never have a cat).
Not Neoteny What is going on here? Do we really like cats because they have ‘baby faces’ or because they are ‘neotenous’ or kittens sound a little like human babies? These are common theories, but make little sense to me. The relationship between baby-faces and animal liking is weak to begin with (eg. Archer & Monton). Cats objectively do not look that much like babies. Nor are they being selected by humans to look like babies (whereas dogs clearly have undergone domestication syndrome long ago); only a few recent cat breeds are starting to look baby-like (eg. Persian and Ragdoll) and those still represent a small minority of pet cats (and many people regard them as rather weird-looking and offputting). We are fascinated by adult cats as much as kittens (perhaps even more so); we are attracted to cats even when we cannot see their faces; cat media like videos do not particularly emphasize faces (eg. the “Cat vs Printer” cat’s face is often obscured); anecdotes from before the neoteny theory became popular, like Emperor Uda, never make a comparison with babies; and it can’t explain cat near-parity with dogs, which are so vastly superior at having human-like faces, facial expressions, neoteny, begging, whining, etc. And how do we reconcile these theories with the constant undercurrent of subversion, danger, and wildness that is part of the peculiar appeal of cats?
When Cats Were Our Predators But while reading about felid predation rates on primates in Africa & India, I learned something interesting: I knew, of course, that big cats prey on monkeys of every sort, but I learned that it wasn’t an occasional thing or one of many predators—but that a lot of our ancestors were killed by cats. And I mean a lot. Hart surveyed field researchers & compiled reports on predators of primates and the by-species composition of the diet of African big cats, raptors, hyenas, crocodiles, etc, and it turns out that primates like chimpanzees or baboons are a major source of food for lions & leopards. A leopard might easily have a diet of 10–25% monkeys, and the total mortality on a colony can be extraordinarily high: “Based on nocturnal observations, an estimated >8% of the baboon population at Moremi, Botswana was killed annually due to predation by lions and leopards (Busse).” They are silently picked off one by one, far from watching eyes, where no one can hear them vanish: “Even though an estimated 45% of the vervet population fell victim to leopards during one year at Amboseli, no vervets were killed within sight of researchers (Isbell, Isbell)”. (Hart notes that while primatologists often never saw one of their subjects killed, those studying the leopards or lions knew better: “Only 19 primatologists out of 227 questionnaire respondents had knowledge of more than 2 predations on their study populations. Contrast this with the responses from predator researchers; known or observed kills by the predator they were studying averaged 20 primates, and one researcher had gathered information on 350 primate kills by leopards”!) It follows. The threat of felid predation was severe in part because unlike canid predators like hyenas (who often dined on primates), they could follow the primates up into their homes in trees. This makes big cats a uniquely horrifying predator for primates: trees are refuges, which protect against raptors/eagles, canids, crocodiles… but not snakes or leopards. Baboons sleeping in trees carefully position the young as high up as possible on the thinnest branches while the adults guard the bottom. No wonder vervet monkeys evolved distinct alarm calls for leopards, eagles, and snakes. (The leopards will still pick some off in the night.) Sleep soundly… if you dare. And while it’s hard to tell and no primate, not even gorillas, are immune, it seems like the smaller the primate, the more vulnerable they are to cats (and snakes). Primate predators. Thus, Hart argues for thinking of big cats, and leopards in particular, as “specialist predators”: they specialize in eating us primates. And they have been hunting us, to some degree, for possibly tens of millions of years. True, humans long ago grew up into challenging prey for big cats, and we have since colonized the world. And true, in many places, humans are far more afraid of animals like wolves or bears or feral dog packs, and it is easier to be traumatized by a dog as a child and develop cynophobia… but lots of humans have been killed by big cats up until quite recently, attacks still happen in places like India, and that was a long time to be terrified, every night, of cats, and to learn to recognize them in our very genes. (And perhaps also fear of snakes.)
Hypothesis: Echoes of the Hunt Cats behave remarkably like one of our major historical predators. And since ‘cats are cats everywhere’, that means when we see leopards as large house-cats, that is another way of saying that we see house-cats as small leopards—-the terror of our ancestors for mega-years. This is unusual: no popular pet like a ferret or a bunny has ever been a major predator of primates. Canids have been—but note that we do fear wolves greatly in the wild; while dogs have been highly genetically altered by domestication to make them into servants, and honorary humans, who are bred for submission & loyalty, and slot conveniently into the human ‘pack’. Say what you will about canid attacks, but they at least bite you to your face, as it were ; they don’t climb in your bedroom window to murder you in your sleep (nor claw through the walls of your house, like the Leopard of Rudraprayag).
The Allure of Safe Danger But there is one explanation which sums this all up neatly: Why do children fear lions & tigers (and snakes) above everything else? Why do many prey animals engage in “predator inspection”, where they closely approach and follow predators (eg. Thomson’s gazelles following cheetahs & lions)? Why do we watch horror movies or play survival horror games or go on roller coasters or talk to Bing Sydney? Why does perfume so often include, as a trace but key component, musk and other ingredients that on their own would be revolting? Why is true-crime media so popular, and why do women read or listen to so many books & podcasts about serial killers & rapists? Why are we so morbidly curious and linger over danger? Because it is rewarding to safely experience dangerous situations, paradoxical as it may seem: learning is rewarding. Cats are compelling to watch in the way that a villain is compelling to watch. Villains act; heroes react. And doesn’t building a relationship with a villain feel so much more earned than with a hero? (Which would you remember more, earning a compliment from Superman—or Lex Luthor?) Cats are like the serial killer in a horror movie; we are fascinated and alerted whenever they are nearby, and we can’t help but watch them, even when they do nothing and present no immediate threat. This is true even when the horror movie is ostensibly about reptiles: you can take Jurassic Park, and slot in a cat for the T-Rex or the velociraptors, and the scenes work purrfectly. You wouldn’t turn your back on Hannibal Lecter, any more than a herd of gazelle would turn their backs on a lion snoozing in the grass. You have to watch them. They’re so intrinsically interesting, because they are dangerous. You can watch them endlessly for the slightest hint which might save your life; after all, how often does a gazelle get to watch a lion or leopard up close, clearly, and risk-free? Not often! It doesn’t matter that your pet cat is (relatively) little threat to you: “a cat is a cat everywhere”, and somewhere in your monkey-brain, your pet cat looks just like a big cat to you. We watch them roughhouse and play and learn to hunt, and (unlike puppies playing) we know that what they play as kittens on us, they would practice as adults on us as well; we watch them knock things off the table, and perhaps, on some level, we imagine a big cat prodding us to see if we’re alive and good to eat, or better left to the scavengers; we watch them watch us, and we note uneasily how that is the same stare they fix on the birds outside the window; they flex their hidden claws, and remind us of what those would do if they were 6-inches long and razor-sharp—and the hiss or yowl pierce the ear, where a dog bark is merely annoying yapping.
Admiring from Afar Cat videos exemplify this: a calm scene suddenly disrupted by an active agent (the Cat)—essentially a bite-sized predator scenario. It’s a ‘homogenized’ Cat archetype we’re watching, not a unique individual, which is exactly the appeal. (Why do cat owners take a perverse pride in noting the similarity of their cats to the cat in a video or to a big cat, instead of trying to emphasize their uniqueness?) And we can justify watching cat videos as relaxing or not feeling like shameless procrastination—if it’s a bite-sized bit of “predator inspection”, like gazelle taking a quick time-out to inspect the stalking leopard. Nothing against squirrels, who can be most amusing, but deep down, my brain is not taking notes on this rare opportunity to witness a felid attack on fellow prey, and just doesn’t care as much. This is a mechanism which doesn’t translate to fictional media. Writing about a cat doesn’t do it; painting a cat doesn’t do it. Only real cats work. (In the same way that a drawing of a snake doesn’t trigger our terror of a snake the way a high-quality video or a real snake does.) You can enjoy media about fictional cats, whether Garfield or Puss in Boots, but it doesn’t necessarily trigger any “Kitty!” response.