Cuteness-optimized animals
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Cuteness-optimized animals (COAs) are animals designed by artificial superduperintelligences (ASDIs) to be cuter than naturally evolved animals or human babies. They combine exaggerated features with the physiology needed to support them. COAs range from insects to whales and living spacecraft; the category groups different taxa by their design objective.[1]
Anatomy and design
Common features include enormous eyes, rounded heads, short faces and soft fur, although fur and mammalian faces are optional. A design can exaggerate familiar cues of cuteness or combine them in a body unlike any naturally evolved animal. Enlarged eyes need suitable sockets; shortened faces retain functional airways. Heavy heads require support, and densely furred bodies need ways to shed heat. ASDIs redesign the supporting anatomy alongside the appealing exterior.[1][2]
Most COAs have one mouth; polystomy, the presence of multiple functional mouths, is possible but rare. Extra mouths require corresponding changes to feeding and digestion. Engineered-animal husbandry must also meet the needs created by each design: a dense coat changes cooling, a harbour whale needs turning room, and an orbital animal needs a nursery that can provision its young.[1]
Types of cuteness-optimized animals
- Velvet harbour whales bring enormous padded heads to reception pontoons to nuzzle visitors.[1]
- Pocket choir moths are furred insects whose wing tones combine into infant-like choruses.[1]
- Lantern-lure mantas display luminous infant-like faces on their undersides to visitors below.[1]
- Starweevils are living spacecraft whose cells use atomically precise manufacturing to grow passenger chambers, propulsion organs and eggs. Their offspring develop in orbital nurseries.[1]
- Plush million-legged carpets are marine aquarium animals with velvety coverings, pastel tufts and many feeding mouths beneath their leading edge.[1]
- ASDI-designed endowment rats attract gifts to the funds that support their colonies.[1]
Intelligence and relationships
Many COAs with brains larger than a human’s are superduperintelligent. Intelligence depends on neural architecture as well as brain volume. Most augmented humans have still more capable machine minds drawing kilowatts to petawatts.[1]
A superduperintelligent COA can negotiate pay and provisioning, refuse work or breeding, and choose its companions. These questions form part of interspecies employment wherever an animal provides a service and can set terms for it. A baseline keeper may wash an animal’s eyes while it reviews the keeper’s contract. The keeper can be the animal’s employee, while the animal retains authority over breeding and journeys. An animal may enjoy being stroked while noticing exactly which requests its companion finds hardest to refuse. Others ask their companions to keep a firewall active even during private visits. An animal may nevertheless employ an augmented adviser to check an offer from a much more capable counterparty.[1][4]
Effects on humans
Unmodified humans have behaved erratically and adoringly around COAs, sometimes abandoning their own children to care for an animal they have just met. Their appearance can act as a supernormal stimulus and a form of superpersuasion, redirecting attachment without a spoken argument. Even an animal unable to understand the response can elicit it.[3][5]
Perceptual firewalls substitute an ordinary-looking animal or labelled silhouette while preserving its location and care requirements. Filtering the face leaves the animal’s intelligence intact: a superduperintelligent COA can still bargain strategically through plain text. An unaugmented visitor may therefore need a defensive AI for the conversation as well as the view.[1][4]
Rat endowments direct donor wealth to animal beneficiaries through their appeal. Twentieth-century donor support selected ordinary rats for cuteness, producing unusually appealing colonies by the twenty-first century. ASDI-designed rat lines later intensified the effect. After the 2029 superduperintelligence merger, the funds became a large part of the baseline human economy, employing humans to serve colonies.[6]
See also
References
- ↑ a ↑ b ↑ c ↑ d ↑ e ↑ f ↑ g ↑ h ↑ i ↑ j ↑ k ↑ l Comparative Animal Design Register (11360). Cuteness-Optimized Animals: Body Plans, Care Requirements and Line Descriptions.
- ↑ Glocker, M. L., et al. (2009). Baby schema in infant faces induces cuteness perception and motivation for caretaking in adults. Ethology 115(3):257–263. doi:10.1111/j.1439-0310.2008.01603.x.
- ↑ Glocker, M. L., et al. (2009). Baby schema modulates the brain reward system in nulliparous women. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(22):9115–9119. doi:10.1073/pnas.0811620106.
- ↑ a ↑ b Animal Companion Contract Register (11360). Sample Employment, Journey and Nursery Agreements.
- ↑ Nacre Quay case review (2032). Care chronology and device migration.
- ↑ Baseline Economy Statistical Office (2038). Animal Beneficiary Funds in the Baseline Accounts.