It's no secret to us at Pets Happy Zone that cute videos of animals can cheer you up. Be it a penguin, a panda, a dog kissing a baby or a baby monkey, people all over the Internet love a cute animal video.
Even though it seems like a silly or unproductive pastime, scientists have discovered that there's an evolutionary reason we love these videos so much. We're attracted to things that have similar features to human babies - big eyes, cheeks and round features - and cat videos often center around baby animals that exhibit similar traits.
"These features are so ingrained in us to respond to. Our survival depends on us taking care of our young. It's part of our human species to respond to these features," said Oriana Aragon, a psychologist at Yale, according to CNN.
In fact, humans don't just like looking at these videos, we get a spike in dopamine from the cute clips. Yes, it's true, your brain exhibits a similar reaction to cat videos as it does to eating chocolate, having sex or exercising: it releases dopamine, the happy hormone, reported CNN.
Most people who watch cat videos online don't actively seek them out, reported Forbes. They come upon them through social networks and end up in what is commonly known as a YouTube Spiral, where you spend much more time than you expected watching cat videos because of the "related videos" shown on the side.
However, watching cat - or dog - videos may not be a complete a waste of time, according to a Japanese study. "This study shows that viewing cute things improves subsequent performance in tasks that require behavioral carefulness, possibly by narrowing the breadth of attentional focus," said Hiroshi Nittono, the lead researcher of the study that was carried out on 132 students at Hiroshima University.
Now that you know that it'll give you a release of dopamine and possibly increase your focus, check out the Clumsy Cat Compilation below, uploaded by CrazyFunnyStuffCFS:
