Baby animals: Boy, they sure are cute!

Behold! A positive application of the old saying, "What is seen can never be unseen."

WARNING: The images in this gallery are dangerously, addictively cute. Once you have seen them, you will want to see more, and more. And more. And you may never finish what you were working on before you saw them. But it's probably too late for you anyway, because you've already seen the baby ocelot, so never mind.

Wired: Cutest Book Ever: Zooborns Internet Craze Moves to Print
Here there be baby otters and baby aardvark. You've been warned.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

MORE: Delightful Creatures • Emotional • Science

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Anonymous

woah, i just came to, i think i just lost half an hour.
Kosmoid

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/science/03cute.html

I don’t know if this has any creedence, but this article discusses a putative scientific explanation of cuteness:

“Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

“Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense [cringe]. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can’t lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired [another cringe] to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.”
osmo

Dear sweet zombie jesus, that aardvark pup was probably the cutest thing Ive ever seen… ever.
billster

The bigger they are, the cuter they ain’t.
Chrs

They’ve never gotten a baby platypus?! Seriously though, somebody make the baby platypus picture happen! I wish to say “woogle woogle” repeatedly as I make fish lips in its general direction.
- lectroid
  
  Ask, and ye shall receive.
- Jonathan Badger
  
  Who’s the cutest little venomous creature candle of causing extreme pain to humans and death to smaller mammals? You are, yes you are, little quacky!
Anonymous

Stop it! Please stop it! I can’t handle the cuteness! Oh my god the otter pup was the last straw.
Vegas

it’s a unbelievably, very sensitive shots!
Felton / Moderator

I call them awww-celots.
Anonymous

Don’t forget the baby Tapir:

http://tinytapir.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/baby-tapir-3.jpg

:)
Anonymous

Do you like moose?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44506516@N00/5121212268/
muteboy

Incredibly cute.
Sadly, the Wired insistence on multi-page galleries full of ads makes it hard to enjoy. :(
Anonymous

http://www.cuteoverload.com

pretty much the best website.
wow.
muteboy

didn’t see the view all link
Anonymous

Mammal propaganda. I showed some people baby flies and nobody had this reaction.
jimh

omg elephant calf!
Actually, I still think the sloth orphanage wins.
http://vimeo.com/11712103