You can get the world news from this morning’s “Hili post,” and it’s depressing, so this post serves as a palliative. Japan is the land of “kawaii,” or cuteness, and so it’s no surprise that the world’s cutest bird and cutest rodent are found there.
I came across the first video below with the caption, “The Shima-Enaga this is is a type of long-tailed tit that lives only in Hokkaido. Unlike the Northern long-tailed tits in the rest of Japan, this one doesn’t have brown “eyebrows” – its face is completely white.”
It turns out that the Shima-Enaga—meaning in Japanese “long-tailed island bird”—is indeed ineffably cute, and is a subspecies of the widespread long-tailed restricted to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaida, so it’s not a full species. Wikipedia says this:
The long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus), also named long-tailed bushtit, is a common bird found throughout Europe and the Palearctic. The genus name Aegithalos was a term used by Aristotle for some European tits, including the long-tailed tit.
Looking at photos of the species, there appears to be considerable color variation, probably associated with geography.
The videos have music.
The species ranges widely across Eurasia, and I suppose the white color of this subspecies is evolved camouflage for the snowy area where it lives. The range:
Here’s an AI voice accompanying a video showing photos of the arboreal gymnastics this bird engages in.
Well, is it the cutest bird ever? (For more photos, go here.)
Speaking of kawaii in Japan, that country also harbors what is without doubt the world’s cutest rodent, the Japanese dwarf flying squirrel (Pteromys momonga). I won’t bore you with details of behavior or morphology; it’s enough to look at the videos. The rodent does bear a resemblance to the bird: rotund and whitish with big black eyes.
Of course you’ll want to see it glide, so here’s a short video showing that behavior:
TThe non-Japanese, grey flying squirrels (such as family Glaucomys) are great too. My developmentally disabled son Aaron keeps his stuffed grey flying squirrel with him in bed most of the time, and I would too if I had one.
I only believe it’s real because you posted it Jerry. I guess this explains why the Japanese invented Hello Kitty.
Perhaps that Japanese long-tailed tit is a subspecies. The ones that I have seen in the UK have much longer tails and consequently enjoy the nickname “flying teaspoon”.
I read that humans evolved to respond to cute. It makes us attached to our babies. Those huge eyes on the squirrel and that sweet round face of the bird have a corner on cute.
Exactly. We have evolved to find kids “cute”— so we tolerate and feed them. Round face, big round head relative to body, big eyes relative to head, short nose, roundish body– all those things trigger our Cute sensors because our kids look like that..
“It’s all evolution, Jake.”
Cute overload!
Both very sweet, thanks!