io9
If you're distracted by lolcats at work all day, new evidence from evolutionary biology suggests it's not your fault. Human visual attention evolved thousands of years ago to track the movements of animals, and even today people are far more distracted by images involving changes in animals than they are by images of inert Mac laptops or moving cars. This research, conducted by psychologists at Yale, goes a long way towards explaining the bizarrely mesmerizing effect of lolcats, despite the fact that there are plenty of other funny, cute things out there on the Web.
A report on the Yale study explains:
What our eyes look at is guided by brain mechanisms that pick out some portions of a scene over others. Since keeping an eye on predators and prey was important during our evolution, Joshua New and colleagues investigated whether animals, both human and otherwise, are more likely to grab our visual attention. The researchers showed subjects pairs of photographs of natural scenes in rapid alternation, with the second photograph including a single change. As predicted, subjects were faster and more accurate detecting changes involving animals than inanimate objects. If experience were producing this bias, then people should also be good at detecting changes involving automobiles, which as drivers and pedestrians they have been trained all their lives to monitor for sudden, life-or-death changes in trajectory. Yet subjects were much slower in detecting changes to vehicles than to more rarely experienced animal species, indicating that learning is not the source of this difference. The bias for animals, the authors conclude, is like the appendix: present in modern humans because it was useful for our ancestors, even if useless now.What's great about this research is that it inadvertently targeted exactly what's happening in lolcat images: the animal has been changed from being just a regular cute kitty, to being a cute kitty with special attributes created by the caption. So a lolcat is an animal image with "a single change."
I really want to see a study that specifically looks at what happens to our brains while looking at pictures of lolcats to see exactly what part of the brain lights up when I can haz a cheezburger.Category-specific attention for animals [PNAS]
Comments
"I really want to see a study that specifically looks at what happens to our brains while looking at pictures of lolcats to see exactly what part of the brain lights up when I can haz a cheezburger." Agreed. Something happens to our brains, that I would really like to see explained.
@collinxvii:
I would say it's the empathy part of our brain. After all, don't we all wish we could haz cheezburger?
Heh. Dune kitty.
dude dunecat nearly killed me, epic
I would imagine it has something to do with the built in cuddly factor. We are attracted to things which looke cute and cuddly. It's what keeps us from eating our young.
@demonwolf: I cannot stop looking at Dunecat. Damn evolution!
We needed a study to tell us we evolved a mechanism to watch animals but not cars and Macs?
Cloverfield spoiler cat says Look heer:
[mine.icanhascheezburger.com]
Dude, hadn't seen the Cloverfield LOLcat yet. That's awesome.
@FrankenPC: And I always thought it was lack of proper seasonning...
I'd like to see a study that shows how the human brain distinguishes animal forms from other objects and if it is possible to trick the human brain into thinking somehting is an animal when it isn't. If we were able to penpoint exactly what it is that triggers this heightened observation then we could build that into our vehicle design and potentially reduce the incidence of collisions.
funny, all this time i thought i was going insane.... so now its just human nature to look at cats all day?
I've heard it said that domesticated animals tend to retain a lot of the features of the premature wild animals they're related to. Meaning adult house cats look a lot like baby lions or something. I wonder if that triggers the same cute-loving part of our brain that keeps (most) of us from killing our babies when we find out what a pain in the ass they are to take care of.
Groan. I think posts like this show why evolutionary biologists hate the popular press reporting their work. It's not that this explanation is implausible, just that it's too speculative given the evidence.
OK, let's accept that humans are predisposed towards devoting attention to animals over inanimate objects. That doesn't explain anything about Lolcats in particular - the cats, the captions, the anthropomorphizing, the poor grammar, the jokes.
As far as this study shows, people should be just as interested in looking at non-captioned pictures of any animal our species has dealt with in the past, or - *gasp* - pictures of people!
If you really want some relevant info, get into the psych work on why humans have humor in the first place, the coevolution of humans and pets, and our bias toward neoteny.
Furst impreshunz on i09z
//to being a cute kitty with special attributes created by the caption.//
That one line is full of win on some many levels.
And to think, we were able to get lolcatz on lifehacker, the anti-time killer :D
Instead of "natural selection made us like cats" how about "artificial selection made cats we would like"?
Reel cats > lolcats cuz reel cats does fings in reel laif
@omg-ponies: Reel laif? DO NOT WANT!
LOLcats are teh awesum! Other than the classic ICHC, my fave is the artistic interpretations provided by Hobotopia.com (no connection with me other than I am a satisfied customer/supporter).
Yes, we have bred kitties (and doggies) to retain juvenile characteristics, which is why we wuv them. However, knowing the typical cat behavior (see my SN), I'm pretty sure the cats are just using us as slaves.
This does help explain why the LOLcat meme/fad has lasted so long. Edumacashunul.
There is something majorly creepy about adults doing the equivalent of baby talk.
Just sayin'
@strider_mt2k: BUZZKILL!
@tetracycloide: Making people put down the cell phone and the beer would be a more effective safety measure than having our cars look like predators. But maybe it could be helpful in keeping my nephew from putting leggos in my DVD/ROM drive!
I am soooo tired of "LOLcats"!
Two or three years ago, when these were just Caturday pictures on 4chan, they were funny. Then they started getting old. Now a bunch of people have re-discovered them, but they're way past their prime.
Just sayin'!
If you liked this, check out www.stuffonmycat.com
I love cats... those mods are amazing!! look at this mod and let me know your opinion, please: www.amazingmods.com
Oh god, Clovercat came out of nowhere. I was this close to scaring the hell out of my coworkers with a huge laugh.
These never ever get old. I laugh at them all the time, even ones I've seen before. Makes me want to get a cat so i can make my own.
Lolruses FTW! Walruses are inherently more funny than cats. Of course, people generally don't bother with pet walruses (walri?).
finally i can haz proof for my employers that lolcat addiction is not my fault!
And people wonder why I studied cognitive science in college...!
Now, where's the study that explains why cat macros are so much funnier than dog macros?
At last! An explanation of why people put sunglasses on their dogs.Now I finally can sleep at night again!
@JennaW: Srsly.
I love lolcats, so I created a site that allows you to translate any website into lolcat. It's a work in progress, so let me know if you have any suggestions.
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