Funny that bipedal, neotenous animals capable of language are so common in modern culture (e.g. cartoons), and not, say, dog-shaped humans who cannot speak.
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That is, why a human-shaped animal and not an animal-shaped human?
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Replying to @kokogiac
An animal face on a human body seems like a member of a healthy intelligent alien race. A human face on an animal body seems like someone removed a human face and sewed it to a dog: a solitary uncanny damaged abomination meant to scare. I don't know why. Still thinking.
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Replying to @preinfarction @kokogiac
How about this: 1) There is attractive variation in facial features like eye separation, eye angle, or the prominence of cheek bones and jaw. Specific extreme traits, not average traits, are sought after (http://faceresearch.org/students/averageness …).
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Replying to @preinfarction @kokogiac
Animal faces are extreme as human faces, and some of the extremity lies along the same directions as human attractiveness extremity, for whatever reason. 2) In contrast, body attractiveness is more about fat and muscle distribution, not structural variation in the bone shape.
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Replying to @preinfarction @kokogiac
A dog body can be appreciated as "wow, he's pretty buff" or "I wouldn't mind seeing what it's like to run like that for an hour" or even "I bet this dog is attractive to other dogs", but it takes an extra unusual mind to frame it in human terms (or to be disinterested in humans).
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Replying to @preinfarction
Assessing this in terms of attraction makes sense, although it seems to me that we find humanoids interesting outside the context of mating. I guess this is part of our social adaptations, i.e. it's more adaptive to pay attention to humanoids than non-.
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Attractiveness supports mating and derives from mating, but isn't always in service of it. "That person has a nice face" is a separate judgement from "I want to mingle my genes with them." Sometimes you just want to be surrounded by nice things. Not all the time, but often.
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