Most loving mothers would vouch that babies were made to make our hearts melt so being their caretaker would be more rewarding - but why do we get that same reaction when we see a cute baby animal, such as a tiny puppy?
The face of a baby animal causes a response in the central part of the orbital frontal cortex in the brain, which is located behind the bridge of the nose.
This finding was revealed when subjects were shown both cute baby animals and cute baby people in a study led by Stephan Hamann of Emory University.
This part of the brain that reacts to cute baby faces is usually associated with positive emotions and pleasure.
"In other words, the neural circuits that update what counts as cute do not pay attention to what species we are looking at: It's not as if we've had to evolve distinctive safeguards against parenting the wrong species," explained Wall Street Journal. "The brain as a whole has no problem distinguishing human from nonhuman, cute or otherwise. Nevertheless, among humans, when it comes to adorableness, on a certain neurobiological level human baby = puppy = calf = fawn = piglet."
It may seem like a strange phenomenon to hear that on a parenting level humans don't necessarily care if the baby is of the same species as them or not - but we're not alone.
Primates also were found to prefer to enjoy looking at baby faces - despite the species - than adult ones in a study conducted at Kyoto University in Japan.
The bottom line - science agrees that the pictures of baby animals all over the Internet will make your heart melt.
