The Many Downsides of Babifying Animals

Source: Ruvim Miksanskiy/Pexels

A very common practice for making nonhuman animals (animals) more appealing or selling various products is to infantilize them by representing them as "cute" big-eyed, round-faced, bobble-headed objects or commodities. In this riveting interview, attorney Taylor Paige Waters discusses her recent writing on this topic and explains why humans have a tendency to infantilize animals, to be drawn to babies, to choose pets who have baby-like looks, and to like social media posts of baby animals far more than those of adults. However, when we frame animals as babies (cute, harmless, dependent), we start to feel entitled to their bodies and attention. The “aww” becomes a permission slip.

Marc Bekoff: How did you get interested in this topic, and how does it relate to your background and general areas of interest?

Taylor Paige Waters: This piece began with a jolt of discomfort and builds upon work I was already doing on the harms of digitally exhibiting animals through platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. I was at an elephant orphanage in Nairobi listening to keepers describe calves who’d lost everything, mothers shot by poachers, families scattered, while tourists smiled for selfies and tried to coax babies closer with branches. That dissonance is the seam I work along as a farmed-animal advocate and an attorney: the gap between what we say we feel about animals and what we actually do to them. My legal work lives inside that gap, scrutinizing claims on packages, challenging systems that turn animals into content or commodities, and asking what genuine care looks like when the audience isn’t watching. The essay sits within a larger thread in my writing on infantilization, spectatorship, and whether animals are entitled to privacy from our gaze.

MB: What are some of the topics that need to be considered, and what are some of your major messages?

TPW: Three ideas anchor this ethic. First, “cute” is not neutral. Big eyes, round faces, bobble-headed proportions trigger caretaking impulses and lower our guard. Once an animal is framed as a baby, interference feels like love and access feels like care. That framing travels: It softens wildlife encounters, justifies “hands-on” selfies, and underwrites a pet market that literally breeds infant-like traits into adult dogs at real welfare costs. Second, infantilization does moral and economic work. It’s a modern Bambi effect. The “aww” funnels attention and dollars toward animals who read as adorable and compliant, and away from animals who don’t. Social platforms didn’t invent this; they industrialized it. Algorithmic watch-time teaches us that the most “engaging” animals are the ones we can hold, diaper, bottle-feed, or narrate—over and over, at scale. That visibility normalizes ownership and contact; it becomes an alibi for exploitation. The aesthetics of tenderness can hide profound entitlement.

Third, rules and boundaries are love made legible. The keepers’ rules, like limited exposure, only trained staff feed and handle calves, photography for personal use, etc., aren’t scolding; they’re the infrastructure of reintegration, the conditions under which an animal’s life can unfold without us. We need more of that posture across contexts: in sanctuaries, in policy, in marketing law, and in our personal behavior. Language belongs here, too. If the being is a hen, a cow, or an adult elephant, we should use those words and reserve “baby” for babies. Language sets the terms of what we think we’re allowed to do. We should also make absence acceptable. And we can refuse the cuddle economy by declining to share or endorse content that turns animals into props.

MB: How do your interests and focus differ from those of others who are concerned with some of the same general topics?

TPW: Many people, rightly, emphasize cruelty and suffering in animal use. I’m focused on something upstream: access. I’m interested in the presumption that we are entitled to look, to touch, to narrate, to breed for aesthetics to negative welfare outcomes, and to schedule animals’ lives around our viewing. I’m asking how that entitlement is taught by culture and technology, and how it hides inside tenderness. My approach also braids doctrine into ethics. Put differently, I’m not only asking people to feel differently; I’m asking institutions to draw lines and to enforce them so that animals’ “no” can hold. The frame is less “feel more” and more “respect the boundary,” which is both more modest and, I think, more powerful.

MB: Who do you hope to reach?

TPW: I’m writing for several audiences at once. First are everyday viewers who love animals and reflexively share “cute” clips. They aren’t villains; they’re the audience the system depends on, and small shifts in what they share and pay for can change demand. Next are sanctuaries, zoos, and aquariums that may want to do better but feel caught between education and engagement metrics. Clearer, public-facing rules protect animals and staff and give visitors a script for ethical behavior. And finally, platforms matter. Their policies already nod at the risk, but enforcement rarely reaches the subtler, relentless pressure to turn animals into props. The fix is not only takedowns; it’s de-ranking contact-based content and elevating educational, non-contact alternatives, so that the path of least resistance is also the most respectful.

MB: Are you hopeful that, as people learn more about this topic, they will change the ways in which they characterize and interact with other animals and respect them for who they truly are?

TPW: Cautiously, yes, because the interventions are practical and immediate. You don’t need to become an expert in animal law to stop sharing a clip of a slow loris being “tickled.” You don’t need to memorize the Federal Meat Inspection Act to ask a company, “What does ‘humanely raised’ mean, and who verified it?” You don’t need to be a scientist to say “cow,” not “baby,” when you’re talking about an adult. These are small habits that, in aggregate, redraw the line between affection and entitlement. Hope, for me, lives in boundary-setting that feels like care rather than scolding. Parents already model this with children around dogs and wildlife; sanctuaries model it with visitor policies; veterinarians are pleading for it in breed standards; and some regulators are finally inching toward it in labeling.

The more we normalize boundaries, the more we praise the photo we didn’t get, the visit where the animal chose not to come out, the easier it is to see animals as adults with their own lives, not as extras in ours. If there’s a single sentence I’d like readers to carry forward, it’s this: The kindest thing we can do, sometimes, is let another life go on without our audience. It asks us to trade a moment of dopamine for a practice of respect, and it invites institutions to back that practice with rules. If we do that consistently, we begin to unlearn entitlement and relearn care.