Well, at the cats vs. dogs vs. babies poll at Pajiba, cats are ahead by a comfortable 20%, having overcome a 7% deficit yesterday to surge to a commanding lead. Because they were on top at noon today, I’ll award, as promised, an autographed copy of WEIT to a randomly-selected reader who attests to their vote on the thread after my preceding post.

The results as of a few minutes ago (3:08 CST):

But don’t be complacent if you’re coming to this poll for the first time. Dog people are tenacious in their misguided love of those foul-smelling canid sycophants, and could easily mount a counteroffensive. If you haven’t voted yet, vote here but record your vote for my contest here.  I’ll keep the thread open until they close the poll.

The winner will be chosen using a random-number generator.

One result, which struck me as well as an alert reader, is the disdain for baby pictures.  Evolutionary psychology tells us that human babies should be far, far more appealing in appearance than kittens, otters, or dogs, for we’re evolved to bond with human infants but not kittehs.  Yet many of us—I’m included here—find the appearance of human larvae either repugnant or a matter of indifference. I tend to view them as small animated hamburgers who become worthy of attention only with about six years of ageing.  If evolutionary psychology is correct, either the internet should be loaded with pictures of babies, or human infants should resemble kittens. It’s a mystery.