Action Spring 2011 Promo : Page 18
of the mole’s neck. This weird sight grosses us out. What if the tentacles weren’t pink? “No one would find the star-nosed mole ugly if its nose were blue,” says Dr. Denis Dutton, the author of a book about beauty. afraid to Get Sick Humans are born with an instinct to protect themselves from getting sick. So if we see anything that looks like a sign of sickness, we see it as ugly. We want to stay away. One sign of sickness in humans is scaly skin. So even though it is normal for a crocodile to have scaly skin, we see it as ugly. Body parts that haven’t grown evenly can also be a sign of disease in people. The male fiddler crab looks ugly to us because it has one giant claw and one small claw. But the The unlovable blobfish looks like a slimy, deformed human face. crab needs its one big claw to fight against other crabs. naturally Cute To most humans, babies are adorable. Scientists say we are born thinking that way. It’s nature’s way of making sure we take care of babies, since they need a lot of care to survive . A human baby has a round head, eyes that face forward, and a small nose. It also has a plump body and floppy arms and legs. Some animals, like kittens, puppies, and pandas, also have one or more of these baby traits . When an animal has a round head or a plump body like a baby, we want to hug it and take care of it. In other words, we think it’s cute. Cute But Deadly Just because an animal looks cute doesn’t mean it’s cuddly, too. In 2008, a 20-year-old man named Liu climbed into a panda’s pen at a zoo in China. “The panda was so cute, I just wanted to hug him,” said Liu. The panda bit Liu’s arms and legs. Liu had to have surgery. So if you want to hug a cute animal, stick with safe ones, like kittens. Even the ugly star-nosed mole is more cuddly than a panda! —Kimberly Feltes Taylor A puppy’s plump body and floppy legs make us want to hug it. 18 Scholastic action | January 31, 2011
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