Ridiculously Cute Critter

"Who's a cuddly fuzzy-wuzzy?"

"They're so cute. They're like if puppies and kittens could have babies."

— Leela talking about penguin chicks, Futurama

A cute widdle creature typically consisting of fur, big eyes, maybe a Big Smile, and little else. It's probably biologically unfeasible, if not downright impossible, but who cares? It's stupidly huggable, and if the show is Merchandise-Driven, it will probably be a top seller. In many cases, it will become an easily-recognizable symbol for the show/series/whatever. You can picture the reaction: "Awwwww..."

You can easily spot one of these by the four tricks detailed on the Analysis page: oversized head, large eyes, and probably large feet and stubby limbs; soft and huggable looking; high-pitched, low volume noises; and small size.

This trope is related to an instinct, genetically encoded into almost every vertebrate to trigger mercy and sympathy in adults when they see a hatchling/pup/kit/etc with these traits.

May double as Non-Human Sidekick types, but the main purpose of these creatures is to be irresistibly cute. Sometimes, they are unconventionally cute. Their natural habitat is the Sugar Bowl, but they have been known to wander far and wide.

Depending on the series, there can be either only one or two types of cute characters, contrasting with the rest of the cast. In others (most commonly those taking place in Sugar Bowl realms), most if not all of the cast is made up of these.

If it's so ugly it's cute, it's Ugly Cute. If it can also inspire fear or uneasiness, then it's Creepy Cute. If it's not so lovable, it's a Sidekick Creature Nuisance. If it's visually appealing but ferocious, it's a Killer Rabbit. If the critter is better defined as a robot, see Cute Machines. If it's cute and capable of holding its own in battle and kicking ass at the same time, then it's Badass Adorable. If it's really not conventionally cute, then it's What Measure Is a Non-Cute?.

When the critter ends up being hated by the audience instead of loved, you have The Scrappy. On the other hand, when the cute critter becomes well-liked despite being a minor character, you have the Ensemble Dark Horse.

May cause Cuteness Overload. May be Yet Another Baby Panda.

Contrast with Eldritch Abomination (though there are exceptions), and contrast that with Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu? if it's a nice monster. Compare with Cute Monster Girl. And if it's behaving cute on purpose to get something, it's a Deceptively Cute Critter.

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Examples:

• Anime & Manga
• Video Games

Advertising

• This Christmas commercial for biscuits (cookies for North Americans) has a family opening a box of them to reveal... Puppies! And Kittens! And a Duckling! And a Bunny! And a Chick! And a Hedgehog! And Piglets! And a baby Deer! And a baby Narwhal! (Okay, this commercial became adorably absurd...)

Asian Animation

• The eponymous character of the Iranian children's cartoon Babaei, who is an anthropomorphic sheep, has an appearance styled off of Sanrio's characters, with all the cuteness that comes with it.
• This 1959 Chinese animated short called Bee and Worm features adorable invertebrates and flowers.
• The eponymous characters of Canimals are absolutely adorable little animals who hide in cans whenever humans are around.
• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The blobby elves from The Season Towns are mostly small and have large eyes, giving them adorable appearances. In the first episode that introduces them, Paddi ends up lovingly rubbing one against his head and calling it cute.
• The Yoyo Supermen from YoYo Man, with their large heads and similarly bulbous eyes, are meant to look adorable.

Comic Books

• The cute little orange octopi Willow comes across in the ocean in Season 9 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She names one Mr. Octopus Fantasticus and expresses a desire to have one as a bathtub toy.
• Shmoos, in the Li'l Abner comic strip, are adorably cheerful aliens that look kind of like walking white bowling pins with endearingly silly faces. They are good-natured, loving, kindly and almost desperate to be helpful to anybody and everybody. They're not just cute, they're also very tasty. And want to be eaten.
• The baby golden gargoyle adopted by Abel in The Sandman (1989) is an adorable little lizard creature.
• Cheche from The Stupiders is a perfect example of this. He's a furry boa constrictor, consisting almost entirely of fluffy fur and two huge googly eyes, tiny cute fangs and to top it off, he's always smiling. His brother, however, has issues.
• Chaffies. They are fluffy little bunny-like critters who are always smiling, with only 1 1/2 ear after a simultaneous lawnmower accident. Also, they like to wander off absolutely everywhere, getting themselves hidden amongst other Ridiculously Cute Critters.
  • One page in the Find Chaffy book has them hidden in a whole group of pandas.
• In the main Marvel Universe, Tigra has gotten pregnant by Hank Pym (really his Skrull double) and given birth. Her baby, William, seems to combine the best cute features of babies and kittens.
• Speaking of Marvel, there's also the Bamfs from X-Men who are freaking adorable.
• Gnutten & Gnuttarna from the Swedish comic Bobo are small white fluffy Cephalothorax creatures.
• The first plot arc of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW) features a village of incredibly cute anthropomorphic cats. Who get decimated by Queen Chrysalis's army.
• In Tina's Groove, Tina ends up dogsitting a puppy so incredibly cute she can't even look at it for long without suffering literal Cuteness Overload. The pup's owner suggests a cup of chamomile, a cozy spot on the couch and visualizing Donald Trump in a diaper as treatment.
• Jeff the baby land shark from West Coast Avengers (2018). He's about the size of a bulldog, and almost as threatening as one.

Eastern Animation

• Qumi-Qumi is a Russian Flash animated kid's series featuring big eyed, brightly colored tribes of cartoon creatures, and the animals are very adorable.

Films — Animation

• Ark has Amarinth's pet, Juju, a canary-hamster hybrid who makes sharp, squeaky chirping while perched on it's master's shoulders.
• The Black Cauldron:
  • Gurgi is an example of Adaptational Attractiveness due to being a hideous (but friendly) wolf- or gorilla-like monster in the original books. Here he's a cute, small, and blue-eyed gopher-like creature.
  • Hen Wen the piglet is a little white sow, very timid, picky about her food and fond of Taran.
• The Boss Baby has the Forever Puppy, a puppy by Puppy Co. which is designed to never grow old, to literally be "a puppy that stays a puppy forever." The idea is that it will steal all of the world's love from babies. It has a huge round head, massive eyes, and is utterly adorable.
• A Bug's Life: Dot looks as adorable as a cartoon ant can.
• Curious George: Even more than in the original picture books and PBS series, George is very cute.
• Rhino the Hamster from Bolt, whose cuteness is potent enough to distract henchmen and save the day.
• The otters in Finding Dory are very fluffy. Their cuteness actually ends up being a useful Chekhov's Gun.
  • Also Baby Dory◊ with her giant eyes and love of sand.
• The Good Dinosaur
  • Arlo is without a doubt one of the most adorable dinosaurs in animation, especially as a Baby. The fact he is the runt of siblings and acts cowardly at times definitely helps.
• The Minions from Despicable Me are so Ridiculously Cute, they got their own movie!
• How to Train Your Dragon:
  • Toothless may very well be the most adorable fire-breathing lizard in any movie ever. It's that big head and eyes that does it. It also helps that his teeth are frequently retracted.
  • The Terrible Terrors, big-headed tiny dragons that act like house cats.
  • The sequel adds the baby dragons (Scuttleclaws) who love to play and don't listen to anyone.
• Bing Bong from Inside Out is an imaginary friend made of cotton candy who is also part cat, elephant and dolphin. Many people who've seen the movie find him adorable and wish that they had an imaginary friend like him when they were younger.
• Kung Fu Panda:
  • Kitten Tai Lung from the first movie is really◊ cute◊, and hits almost every beat of the trope perfectly: oversized head, large eyes, stubby limbs, soft and huggable looking, and small size. They weren't kidding when they said they wanted to make the characters "look like plush toys"◊. The fact he's learning kung fu and taking to it like a prodigy crosses him over into Badass Adorable territory as well. Which just makes what he ends up becoming all the more upsetting and painful.
  • Kitten Tigress is also adorable◊. which is a major part of Tigress's backstory: after seeing the ridiculously cute baby Tai Lung grow into a snarling, selfish, greedy beast thanks to being doted on, Shifu forces himself not to feel the same compassion towards baby Tigress, lest she do the same. But if you can't feel compassion and love to something so cute, what can you feel? Nothing. It's a broken, blank-eyed Shifu that trains baby Tigress.
  • Baby Po◊ from Kung Fu Panda 2 was so cute Mr. Ping adopted him.
• The Gang of Seven from The Land Before Time all qualify, but the main two are Ducky (who has a squeaky voice) and Chomper◊ (who manages to be an an adorable T. rex!).
• Uni-Kitty in The LEGO Movie. Her cuteness is lampshaded in the merchandise.
  Sticker Book Bio: Whenever Uni-Kitty builds something, she can't help but make it totally adorable. Awww!
• Pipsqueak the baby Bar-ba-loot in The Lorax film adaptation. His cuteness is later exploited by the Once-ler.
• Mort, the little lemur in Madagascar. Smaller than the other lemurs, huge head, and even bigger eyes.
• From Rio, we have the fluffy, large-eyed Baby-Dory-esque Baby Blu◊. Not to mention Blu and Jewel's offspring at the end of the film.
• Puss from Shrek could stop an advancing army with his ginormous eyes.
• Up: Dug himself is pretty adorable. A golden retriever (arguably one of the cutest of all dogs) who can speak, whose entire dialogue consists of expressions of love despite having just met SQUIRREL!
• Extend this trope to mechanical "animals" and you get WALL•E, whose huge adorable eyes seem custom-made to tug the heartstrings of all who gaze upon him.
• In Wolfwalkers, Robyn and Mebh's wolf forms have cute proportions, simple fur coloring, playful expressiveness and are smaller than the rest of the adult cast, making them look more like huggable puppies◊ than fierce wolves.
• The ridiculously adorable tiny snowmen (known as Snowgies) from "Frozen Fever" created by Elsa's sneezing when she gets a cold.
• Pascal, the chameleon sidekick from Tangled, has the requisite oversized head and large eyes, and makes cute squeaky sounds.
• The Q-Teez, an all-female j-pop group of young red pandas, who only speak Japanese, in Sing. A brief running gag in the movie was that they misinterperet Buster Moon's words as being selected for the competition even though they really weren't.
• Mulan has Cri-Kee, a Perpetual Smiler cricket sidekick with big eyes.
• Turning Red:
  • In the ultimate test of her ability to control her panda transformation, Mei is confronted with a box of kittens that are deliberately chosen to be as cute as possible, with high-pitched plaintive meows, loud purring, and large heads. They're also ridiculously affectionate, climbing all over her and rubbing themselves on her.
  • Mei’s red panda form is also highly adorable (both in and out of universe). Mei and her friends exploit this to raise money for going to the 4*Town concert.
• The Luma-like Star from Wish (2023), a cuddly and round star-like being that plays with a ball of yarn like a kitten and causes all manner of goofy but good-natured shenanigans all around the kingdom of Rosas.

Films — Live-Action

• Fizzgig from The Dark Crystal. Basically a Tribble crossed with a pomeranian and a shark.
• A rare robotic version of this trope would be the title character◊ from Earth to Echo. Its small size and big blue eyes definitely make it the cutest thing in the movie.
• The Niffler from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a sniffly little potato of a creature. It's vaguely similar to a platypus, but without the venom and instead having a penchant for stealing shiny things. And as if that weren't enough, the sequel gives us...baby Nifflers!
• Subverted in Galaxy Quest, when the creatures resembling human children suddenly reveal their murderous and cannibalistic tendencies (despite Guy foreshadowing their transformation).
  Gwen: "They are so cute!"
  Guy: "Sure, they're cute now, but in a second they're gonna get mean... and they're gonna get ugly somehow, and there's gonna be a million more of them."
• The eponymous Keanu is a Cute Kitten who's so adorable, he inspires incredibly violent Yandereness in pretty much everyone who ever lays eyes on him. This being a comedy film, it naturally results in a massive gang war.
• Star Trek (2009) gives us Keenser, with his tiny size and his huge black eyes, he is truly adorable. He's also a very proficient engineer and Scotty's Number Two.
• Star Wars:
  • The entire race of Ewoks. They're furry little alien teddy bears!
  • The Porgs in The Last Jedi, fluffy round birds with big eyes.
  • The Star Wars Bestiary informs us of the Voorpak. It is a tiny, almost spherical Pomeranian-like animal that Naboo nobility use for companionship and warmth. It is basically a cross between a Pomeranian for its size and fluff, a fuzzy spider for its hidden legs, and a Vampire Bat for its face. And it's a-freaking-dorable.◊
  • In the Expanded Universe are the catlike race Kushiban, who look like this◊. They're a sentient species. This particular Kushiban? Jedi Master Ikrit.
  • The blue, elephant-like species of Ortolans (which first appeared in Return of the Jedi) also qualifies, where they go into full-on Woobie Species when the Separatist Droids invade their homeworld in Star Wars: Clone Wars. Many, many players in Star Wars: The Old Republic couldn't find it in their hearts to perform any dark side actions against their kind on Hoth, particularly the one where Republic players are sent to their geothermal power plant (which they literally depend on for their survival) to destroy it.
  • The Expanded Universe also gives us gizka, cute little frogs with big eyes that are essentially the Star Wars tribbles.
  • Babu Frik◊ from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the teeny-tiny droid-fixing handyman sidekick of Zorri Bliss... both lovers and haters of that movie are united in the opinion that Babu was a high point and utterly precious.
• The Mül converter in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets looks like a rat-sized pastel-colored pangolin designed by Jim Henson.
• Baby Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is absolutely adorable. He nails pretty much everything on the list of qualifications.
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings has Morris, a faceless furball with wings who also serves as Trevor Slattery's pet.

Gamebooks

• The Jib-Jib from Fighting Fantasy is a subversion, being small and fluffy, and possessed of a loud screech that can be heard for miles. They're used as living burglar alarms by some people in the setting. JubJubs (and Meekins) from Neopets were inspired by these critters.

Literature

• Bigfoot and Littlefoot: In the second book, The Monster Detector, Mrs. Nukluk brings a pair of Arctic Floofs into the school to be class pets. Arctic Floofs look like fluffy cotton balls with long ears, thin tails, and the face of a rodent.
• Carnival in a Fix: Emily finds a book among Mr. Moonbottom's belongings called How To Keep and Care For Your Peladorian Puffball. On the cover of the book is a picture of a puff ball with a smiling face. This is because the Rustlers that are sabotaging the park are really juvenile versions of Peladorian Puffballs. They start out as little black spiky balls before the exterior bursts off, revealing all the fluff underneath.
• DrakAkhos from Phenomena is a really adorable newly hatched dragon whom Alk and Ilke adopts.
• Martian flat cats from Robert A. Heinlein's The Rolling Stones (1952), which may have inspired Tribbles.
• The "pygmy puffs(keins)" from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Basically a miniature Tribble dyed girly colors. Also nifflers, furry little black things with long pointy snuffly noses.
• Geoffrey Chaucer, in Book of the Duchess, has a puppy beckon the narrator because it wasn't yet trained for hunting (meter-preserving "Blind Idiot" Translation):
  A whelp that found me as I stood, / That had a-followed, and could do no good. / It came and crept to me as low, / Right as it had-a me a-know, / Held down his head and joined his ears, / And laid all smoothly down his hairs.
• Treecats from the Honor Harrington series. Yes, they are as deadly as they are sapient, but they are as cute as they are deadly. How else could they endear themselves to those people they haven't bonded to in order to obtain celery?
• Lazarus Long gave this observation in the Robert A. Heinlein novel Time Enough for Love:
  On the planet Tranquille around KM849(G-0) lives a little animal known as a "knafn." It is herbivorous and has no natural enemies and is easily approached and may be petted—sort of a six-legged puppy with scales. Stroking it is very pleasant; it wiggles its pleasure and broadcasts euphoria in some band that humans can detect. It's worth the trip.
  Someday some bright boy will figure out how to record this broadcast, then some smart boy will see commercial angles—and not long after that it will be regulated and taxed.
  In the meantime, I have faked that name and catalog number; it is several thousand light-years off in another direction. Selfish of me—
• Mouse of The Dresden Files started out this way. Harry acquired him by accident when he was hired to rescue a bunch of puppies and one of them crawled out of the box and hid in his car. Harry proceeds to spend the rest of the book carrying around the little gray furball in the pocket of his coat, and several characters are reduced to cooing over it due to the sheer cuteness. However, he doesn't stay tiny for long.
• One of the protagonists of The Skins of Dead Men has tamed a creature that he refers to as a "coon cat" (probably a ringtail from context.) Reactions are about what would be expected given the linked picture.
• The Fuzzies◊ from Little Fuzzy and its sequels. Tiny golden-furred intelligent bipeds who resemble a cross between a marmoset and the world's smallest and most adorable Sasquatch.
• In the Rainbow Magic series, Rachel declares a baby penguin to be the most adorable thing she's ever seen. The illustration proves it.
• In the Sector General novels, Sommaradvans (a sentient species), by pure chance, are Ridiculously Cute to Gogleskans (an unrelated sentient species from a completely different planet). This becomes a plot point, when a Gogleskan has life-threatening problems with childbirth, and since Gogleskans have biologically hard-wired Hates Being Touched, tendencies to uncontrollably violent panic attacks, and lethal natural weaponry, a nearby Sommaradvan is the only person who might be able to touch them intimately without being stung to death or impaled.
• In Russia, there's Cheburashka, a cute creature with big ears who would later become popular in Japan and Russia.
• While the majority of stories made by Beatrix Potter feature Funny Animals, some of the cuter looking characters she created are Tom Kitten from The Tale of Tom Kitten, Samuel Whiskers from The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, Miss Tiggy Winkle, Mrs. Tittlemouse, and Peter Rabbit.
• In The Watchmaker of Filigree Street the titular watchmaker creates a clockwork octopus that is definitely this to readers, although some of the characters are offput by it.
• Franklin Turtle, Snail, Harriet Turtle and plenty of the other woodland creatures from the Franklin book series and its companion cartoons are utterly adortable and charming.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who: "Partners in Crime" gives us the Adipose◊: Adorable little aliens made out of human fat. So cute they make additional cameos in "The End of Time" and its wrap party video.
  Donna: (the Adipose are waving at her and she can't help waving back) I'm waving at fat.
• Joey and Chandler's chick when it was first brought on Friends. Chandler lampshades this when it later grows into a rooster.
• The adorable, burping yeast sock puppets that appear on many episodes of Good Eats. So popular are they on the show, in fact, that many fans have attempted to make their own.
• Carly's hair from iCarly and there's also Peter the Penguin and the Pee Wee Babies from "iDate a Bad Boy", Marvin the Ostrich from the Fred episode and the poodle puppet and the possums from "iGo to Japan"....
• Japanese children's show Inai Inai Baa! at some point introduced a character named Ou-Tan. He's a little... humanoid thingy with maraca-shaped appendages on his head, with a rather adorable design.
• Love and Destiny:
  • Little White◊, the dog Ling Xi rescues. It's practically a ball of fluff, with the most adorable little face.
  • Five Bowls◊, the baby monster Ling Xi adopts after Little White's death. It has tiny antlers and a very rabbit-like head.
• The Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Colossus and the Headhunters" has a genetically engineered fuzzy cute thing called "Nummy Muffin Coocol Butter" that the Mads send up to the Satellite. Mike falls under its/her spell, but he's forced to send it/her back because 1. she has a shedding problem that really rankles the Bots, and 2. Frank misses her desperately.
• Li'l Sebastian the miniature horse from Parks and Recreation is adored by all citizens of the town of Pawnee. Even Ron Swanson isn't immune! His funeral is attended by thousands of the town's residents.
• Chicken puppet Chica from The Sunny Side Up Show is this. One blogger compares her and the network to crack, and every other post on Sprout's Facebook page is requests for a plush Chica toy.
• Lucy the Firefly from The Good Night Show.
• The iconic tribbles from Star Trek, which are basically living balls of fluff. You'll notice many other examples on this page have been compared to them.
• From The Mandalorian, one word... GROGU◊
• Ultra Series: Perhaps not coincidentally, they're also both the Team Pet of their shows.
  • Hanejiro from Ultraman Dyna, a tiny, furry alien creature that is completely peaceful (if a bit mischievous) and possesses a number of useful abilities for the team.
  • Ultraman Mebius has Rimu/Lim. Eleking, a chibi version of popular Ultraman kaiju Eleking.
• The Untamed: The rabbits, of course. They're basically walking cotton balls with paws and ears.

Music

• Blackmill uses a squirrel as his logo.

Music Videos

• The puppies in the music video for The Chalkeaters' song "Breathtaking". They are bright glowing pink and fluffy, they can sprout wings and fly, the larger ones are rideable, and they attack game companies with light beams of kindness.
  A whirlpool of puppies in vague neon light
  All purple and fluffy, please take me inside
  They're swirling and laughing, awakening my mind
• Weezer did two different videos for the track "Island in the Sun". One of them is littered with adorable critters.

Podcasts

• Tellie from Sequinox is the servant of Gaea, who looks mostly like a fox but with weird proportions and occasionally different colours. A lot of the cuteness also comes from it's penchant for eating anything but food, and also it being kinda dumb.

Puppet Shows

• Many of The Muppets would count (with their big bulgy eyes and fluffy bodies—specially if you live on Sesame Street). Bean Bunny stands out, as he's supposed to act cute so the rest of the Muppets wouldn't have to. There's also Kermit's tiny, musically talented nephew Robin, and Gonger, a somewhat new Sesame monster who is a tiny, pink, hyperactive British chef.
  • In the Fraggle Rock episode "Invasion of the Toe Ticklers", we have the titular characters. They're basically big fuzzy caterpillars with antennae and wide smiles.
  • The Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock episode "Night of the Lights" introduces the world to Coop, an adorable "flooby bug". He is pink, super fluffy, has very large eyes, a second pair of antennae that look like a little mustache, makes sweet lil soft, high pitched noises, and he can stretch his legs and neck much longer than before to show off some serious dance moves. In fact, the Fraggles themselves both here and in the original are some of the most adorable Muppets out there. Wembley deserves a particular shout out for his large eyes and nature as the Fraggles' resident Keet.
  • Bear in the Big Blue House has Tutter, a little Muppet mouse adorable in much the same way Wembley Fraggle is. Most of the cast qualifies, with their charming Black Bead Eyes.

Roleplay

• Kwang from Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues is a young, fuzzy grey squirrel with an increasingly close friendship with his owner and an inability to say anything besides "Mom". He's very good at drawing out the softer side of shy or vitriolic characters.
• In Effulgence, the world of Chronicle has a cave inhabited entirely by ridiculously cute, and friendly critters. Most notably the poofs, which are cuddly colorful balls of fluff that go "whmmm" and exude a healing aura.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Pseudodragons. They look like red dragons, but they're the size of house cats. Small house cats. Faerie dragons are much the same, only with butterfly wings.
  • Several celestials are surprisingly cute for literal embodiments of good. Coure eladrins are playful fairies, the musteval guardinals resemble bipedal ferrets, and hollyphants are two-foot-long, winged elephants.
  • Dragon #243 introduces some magical crossbreeds for 2nd Edition, one of which is the duckbunny - because a novice transmuter needs to start somewhere, and owlbears are dangerous! Duckbunnies are magical fusions of snow hares and ducks that are completely harmless, but usable as Fantastic Livestock or as a wizard's Familiar. But more than that, "and most importantly to some, duckbunnies are almost irresistibly cute, with their big eyes, floppy ears, and soft, downy fur. It is no coincidence that a majority of the wizards who have created duckbunnies in the laboratory have young daughters at home, and it must be stated that duckbunnies do make wonderful pets."
• Wastems and Wastits from Human Occupied Landfill. Wastems are cute little creatures whose bodies are filled with a tapioca-like substance that can be used for anything from food to motor oil.^note Possibly inspired by Al Capp's shmoos, as detailed in the Comics section. Wastits are cruel, psychotic, and make most grown men wet themselves in terror if they know what they're dealing with. And the worst part? If you don't have the "spot wastit" skill, you can't tell the difference between the two, even if the wastit is walking away from a bloody corpse with a skull in one hand and a bloody butterfly knife in the other.
• If your kobold in Kobolds Ate My Baby has the Winning Smile perk, you can force intelligent foes to stop for a moment by flashing a smile that makes them squee at the adorable little fuzzball.
• Pathfinder:
  • Silvanshee Agathions, which are basically sapient, Neutral Good, angelic kitties with magical abilities. They're also available as familiars.
  • It also has lyrakien azatas, which are much like the aforementioned coure. And brownies, although they're somewhere between adorable and creepy.
  • Leshies. Save for the rather frightening mushroom-based ones, anyway.
  • The pipefox◊, a tiny furry magical creature with a snake-like body and the head of a fox.
• Rogue Trader introduces us to the gyrinx, a mid-sized cat that hangs around psykers. Of course, this being 40k, they serve as conduits to increase their master's already considerable psychic power and tend to explode if a Daemon takes interest in the relevant psyker.
• The Sci-Fi version of Fluxx, Space Fluxx, has shout outs to several different Sci-Fi establishments, but all a little different to avoid nasty copyright infringements. They have a "Cute Fuzzy Alien" card that looks an awful lot like the ones Kirk had trouble with...
• Skittermanders in Starfinder are a race of helpful intelligent aliens who look like six-armed walking stuffed toys.

Theme Parks

• Fuzzball in Captain EO is the hero's primary sidekick — a little fuzzy orange thing that has butterfly wings and can sit on one's shoulder. It can also play guitar and even gets the hero out of a tight spot.

Toys

• There are many many different cute-ified plush versions of Cthulhu, Nyarlethotep, and other Great Old Ones from the Lovecraft Mythos.
• There are also cutesy toy versions, plush and otherwise, of various parasites, bacteria, and viruses; such as Parasite Pals and GIANTmicrobes.
• Furby, the part owl, part hamster robotic pet toy.
• Kitty Kitty Kittens◊, which are Cute Kitten dolls with large heads and small endearing eyes that purr when you pet them.
• Littlest Pet Shop consists entirely of tiny bobblehead animals with large eyes and cheerful expressions.
• Squishables!! They manage to make everything adorable, up to and including Cthulu
• As mentioned in the anime section, Sanrio has a lot of characters that are designed like this. Especially characters that are very popular, such as My Melody, Cinnamoroll, Wish Me Mell◊ and BonBonRibbon.◊
• Tamagotchi:
  • Most modern characters tend to have massive heads and big eyes, stubby limbs, and other features that give them overall adorable appearances.
  • On the original virtual pets, how cute the Tamagotchi became was determined by how well they were cared for; severely neglecting a Tamagotchi would result in one that was ugly and had a short life span.

Visual Novels

• Rewrite has Kotori's "dog" Chibi-Moth, who is actually a baby miniature mammoth. Since it has its tusk and trunk hidden, it ends up looking like a strange little adorable furball. Kotori insist that its a dog though, but she has good reasons to do so, despite giving him a name that basically means "little mammoth."
• Starship Promise gives us Comet, the adorable green space mouse that serves as Team Pet to the crew of the Promise.

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner:
  • Sterrance, whom Strong Bad considered so cute that he succumbed to a squeeing fit.
  • The Cheat's animesque counterpart, The Cheatball is a tiny ball with big, blue eyes and a small mouth it never uses. This is a perfect fit for this trope.
• Catbug from Bravest Warriors not only has a cute design, but is voiced by an extremely Large Ham six-year-old.
• Satina from Satina Wants a Glass Of Water.
• From Cartoon Hangover, who produces Bravest Warriors, we have Puppycat and the Temp Agent's turtle in Bee and Puppycat. Puppycat is a Badass Adorable who may object to being called cute. The turtle is a straighter example as it just sits there in the scene and is cute and funny.
• Lucas the Spider, the googly-eyed YouTube sensation said to cure arachnophobia.
• The omnipresent imps in Zero Punctuation, who resemble a slightly rotund version of the Android mascot. Their usual role is to act out whatever point the review is making, using slapstick, but occasionally they talk. (Well, "talk.")
• DSBT InsaniT: Fire Guy is a cartoony fireball with big eyes, and limbs like a stick figure.
  • Lizzie is a little black lizard with big expressive eyes.
• Dreamscape: Snowball in his bear cub form, complete with Black Bead Eyes.
• If Disney Cartoons Were Historically Accurate: The Jews hiding out in the forest are depicted as cutesy little critters with giant, beak-like noses.
• Zwei the corgi, from RWBY, only takes about ten seconds to get Weiss wrapped around his fi- well, around his paw. (Her teammate Blake takes a dimmer view of him... except in some of the Chibi episodes.)
• Pick pretty much any character from any Object Show. Stick limbs, Black Bead Eyes, all plastered on Animate Inanimate Objects. And it makes them rather adorable! However, they all have their own ways to balance it out from tasting like diabetes, such as the somewhat Surreal Humor of Battle for Dream Island, the recent drama of Inanimate Insanity's second season, and the gore of Object Terror.
• Gilbert the Cat from GoAnimate is a very cute and lovable cat, unless Caillou brings him to school to tell him "you know what to do", in which case he'll attack Miss Martin, who is later rushed to the hospital.
• The Fluffy Thing from RObotzi is a white ball of fur with huge eyes which Mo considers very adorable. There's an alien race that looks like this.

Webcomics

• In a long defunct webcomic, Acid Reflux, we saw critters similar to those that now grace the image at the top of the page: Melting Pandas. They are almost Exactly What It Says on the Tin, although it's uncertain whether they truly are melting, or just completely boneless. Plus, oxygen is a powerful narcotic to them. Apparently, they only existed to be adorable. The only ones that were still alive were ones that had been put in stasis at an old museum. Upon hearing about the two main qualities of these creatures, one character commented that maybe there's a reason that they were extinct.
• Cassiopeia Quinn:
  • The Vanaa are a species of adorable jelly blob creatures. However, their cute appearance can be deceiving due to their military prowess.
  • The Doggo are a species of miniscule puppy-like aliens allied with the Prime Galactic Navy. After Vrax saves them from becoming the slaves of Dr. Botz, they repay her with an "almost life-size" statue - which only really comes up to her knee.
• Charby the Vampirate has the vaeltwii, winged large-eyed gerbil-like traders that often to wear hats and scarves and whom shopkeepers cater to as they'll get a place more business if they like the shop.
• Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures:
  • The Mows. You can see them crawling around on the main page, even. They look a lot like Meerkas, fat squirrel things from Neopets.
  • DMFA also has Deebs (Short for 'Deathbringer' - yes, the original one). Basically, a baby bunny made from pink bubblegum. When combined with Jyrras' Bishonen-ness, it was cute enough to give Lorenda acute diabetes.
• Dr. Yahwah from Denma the Quanx Its puppy shape is cute. But it does brutal things in Silverquick HQ. In fact the puppy shape is its avatar.
• In El Goonish Shive, the game Susan plays contains a dog that is designed to be cute and innocent looking such that to Kick the Dog would be an unambigously evil act (and thus affect the Character Model Karma Meter).
• Fluffy in Hazard's Wake, whose cast page entry even states, "Does Fluffy have a point other than being the cute mascot-ish character?"
• Many characters of Hi to Tsuki to Hoshi no Tama, including The Hero, are pagets, which are like fuzzy Shoulder-Sized Dragons.
• Homestuck's Tinkerbull is a tiny little bull with wings. Its species is known to swarm hapless adventurers in order to cuddle them.
• Lackadaisy of all things has this in a character from the side comics: Mordecai's little sister Rose, a little kitten with massive eyes, chubby cheeks and a stubby little tail whose introductory comic is her making cute faces and giggling at Mordecai's Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness when he's critiquing her drawing. Since the cats are human analogues, she's roughly 3-5 years old when she's shown since she's only appeared in flashbacks so far.
• Manly Guys Doing Manly Things has Jet's Raptor Squad, which consists of combat raptors. Said combat raptors are turkey-sized, plumaged in warm pastel colours, afraid of fireworks and docile enough to be cuddled. As it turns out, that's deliberate: the genes that made them fat and adorable are also the ones that make them docile and friendly. A more typical looking velociraptor-sleek, lean, built for speed-is also too skittish and was basically unsuitable for training.
• Monster Food from A Moment of Peace are classically adorable. Big eyes and little else.
• Monsters Can Be Heroes Too! The main protagonist is Coal the Kobold, an adorable big-eyed lizard girl with an adorably innocent personality.
• Sheldon The Tiny Dinosaur stars a Fun Size dinosaur who wears an acorn cap as a pretend turtle shell. His best friend an equally diminutive baby seahorse, and he has a plushie that is really a fluffy cotton ball with eyes. #cute is one of the comics' staple descriptors, for good reasons.
• Unless you've read Skin Horse, you won't believe that silverfish, centipedes, and cobras can be utterly adorable. But they are. Especially the cobras.
• In Webcomic/Sluggyfreelance there are at least two subversions. Regular character Bun Bun looks like a cute little rabbit, but is arguably the deadliest character in the comic. The Evil are cute little kittens bred by Satan who can shred a person in seconds.
• Choo-Choo Bear from Something*Positive: a hairless, boneless, shapeshifting cat.
• The Jinxlets from Starslip are a rare, fur-free species. They compensate for lack of fur with overwhelmingly cute behavior.
• Doppler, from tinyraygun, a baby alien with long Expressive Ears and adorable big green eyes.
• Uni from Unicorn Jelly is a cute jelly monster.
• Unsounded: "Squeals" are large amalgamations of happy memories which look like a smiley glowing yellow and teal seal or otter mixed with the happy fish-squid creatures formed by smaller groupings of happy ghostly memories and are reminiscent of sea hares, if they had more mammalian cute features.
• User Friendly has Dust Puppy, an innocent, adorable ball of fluff with feet and big eyes.
• During a hyperspace mishap in Vexxarr, the crew finds Twee space, an alternate dimension where everything gets turned into one of these. Vexxarr manages to weaponize this against boarders, with the help of one exception in this universe: The normally pretty cute Sid.
• The unofficial mascot of Woo Hoo is the "slotter"— sloth-otter.
• In Yokoka's Quest, Raya is a cute furry Cheerful Child who especially fits this label to a tee. She cutely pleads with Puppy-Dog Eyes and Blush Stickers to Kagi and Yfa to let her go and look for a mushroom with Yfa. Grace reacts to Raya's cuteness when seeing her for the first time with her own Puppy-Dog Eyes.

Web Original

• Along the same lines as Neopets are the Webkinz. Thus far, Gantz has managed to make every species imaginable into a Squee-worthy plushie covered in their trademark stringy fur (even, oddly, animals that tend to lack fur such as frogs). The things are designed to make kids scream, "OMG!!! WANT!!!" after all, and there's a reason they were so extremely popular during the mid-to-late 2000's.
• Protectors of the Plot Continuum:
  • CAFs — Cute Animal Friends — are the results of an author attempting cute and instead getting diabetes-inducing twee. Particularly bad examples end up as little more than big eyes, fur, and cute cooing sounds, like oversized tribbles. Some can be trained or educated into becoming productive members of the multiverse, but a particular Sidekick Creature Nuisance may be better off simply fed to the nearest mini.
  • Minis can fall under this as well, from Ugly Cute in the case of the mini-Balrog or Camoudile, all the way to mini-Hounds of the Baskervilles.
• The pet cow you can buy in Progress: The Game. It may not do anything other than sit there and look adorable, but it does it so well that it's worth the price.
• SCP Foundation:
  • The Puffer kittens (SCP-2558-J) are this, because of their cuteness and effect it has on the staff the actually have Euclid classification.
  • The "Eye Pods"
• YouTuber and former Capcom sound designer Hideaki Utsumi (currently a teacher at HAL vo-tech school in Osaka) showcases a menagerie of pet birds on his channel, of which the Breakout Character is an adorable chattering lory named Gumi, better known to the Internet as the Red Birb. His unusually keen sense of comedic timing as well as his signature "WUEWUEWUEWUE!" laugh quickly turned him into an internet meme and even landed Gumi a cameo in a Japanese Fanta commercial.
• Looming Gaia: Poffles are deliberately designed as more cutesy than other creatures in Looming Gaia. They are monsters made by Miliko, the Divine of Vanity, and resemble small round two-legged dogs. They're cute and harmless, but also very stupid, loud, and impossible to train. Some people love them and keep them as pets, while others, including Miliko himself, hate them.

Web Videos

• YouTuber Zamsire makes animations of Ridiculously Cute Critters known as Eggdogs. They're basically walking eggs with Pomeranian faces.
• The animatronics of the Five Nights at Freddy's Musical are not malicious like their game counterparts are, and in fact, they only want to say hi and be friends, and in that regard, they are adorable. Unfortunately, poor Markiplier is scared out of his mind of them, thinking them to be out to kill him.
• Karameru's animations feature adorable blob-like cats, penguins and axolotls doing bizarre, humorous things, such as in this short. Even though occasionally their strange antics cross into Cute and Psycho territory due to how destructive they can get, the Surreal Humor of the videos keep them from losing their cuteness.

Western Animation

• Several shows on The '80s ran over the concept of cute magical talking critters as protagonists, this includes:
  • Adventures of the Gummi Bears: cute bears.
  • The Biskitts: cute puppies.
  • Care Bears (1980s): cute bears and other furry animals.
  • Ewoks: cute furry aliens.
  • Monchhichis: cute monkeys.
• With his big eyes and his energetic behavior, Rivet from The Adventures of Figaro Pho seems to have been designed to be adorable.
• Reginald the koala from American Dad!. In his first appearance, he even had a theme song and a montage dedicated to his cuteness. The fact that he's a secret agent who works for the CIA probably makes him even more adorable.
• Amphibia: The Screen Fiend (page image) is a cat-fox-red panda hybrid that squeaks and sneezes. It appears in an online video Anne and her friends watched, then uses its cuteness to lure people into watching the videos endlessly and literally getting sucked into their phone.
• The Warner siblings from Animaniacs, Dot even has her own song about it.
• Arcane:
  • Heimerdinger's pet poro. Imagine a furry sphere slightly smaller than a basketball with tiny eyes, ram's horns, stubby legs, and a fur mustache. It appears to be blind in its left eye, and also makes high-pitched squeaks and barks like a lap dog.
  • Rio, the giant white pink salamander is an unconventional example but it's large eyes make it darn cute. No wonder why young Viktor quickly offers to help save its life.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Momo the Winged-Lemur, a lemur/cat/bat cross that is all cute.
  • Appa and other sky bison like him are pretty adorable too, especially the babies◊.
  • Foo-Foo Cuddlypoops, a baby moose-lion. Unlike its mama, it's tiny and fluffy and lacking the deadly antlers and huge fangs.
  • Koala-Sheep. Exactly what it sounds like.
  • Turtle ducks, especially turtle ducklings. Every bit as cute as a real duckling.
  • The Purple Pentapus, a tiny, purple five-limbed octopus that likes to be tickled.
  • The Legend of Korra gives us Pabu the fire ferret, a cross between a ferret and a red panda. That is a powerful combination of cute.
• Bilby: The albatross chick is a small ball of white fluff with huge Puppy-Dog Eyes, tiny feet, wings and beak.
• A few characters from Camp Lazlo, examples include Clam, Patsy, Nina and others.
• CatDog looked extremely cute during their childhood, as seen here◊.
• ChalkZone has Snap, Rudy's little chalk drawing. His huge eyes, sweet nature, daredevil personality, and Fingerless Hands make him this.
• Walter Lantz's Chilly Willy, a tiny penguin who's always cold, hungry, and determined to get what he wants.
• The characters in The Crumpets, which can be a hybrid of humans and some kind of mammal such as otters. The word "human" is even mentioned in one or more episodes.
• The lovable ghost pup in Danny Phantom. It's friendly and adorable in small mode, but can turn big and aggressive if it needs to. "Yikes" is a far more appropriate word for that one.
• Doc McStuffins has Squibbles, who is basically a ball of fuzz that looks a lot the voorpaks from Star Wars, but much more colorful.
• The Dragon Prince has Adoraburrs, small, colorful, fuzzballs that live inside flowers. And they're stackable!
• Drawn Together: Ling Ling is a subverted example in that while he is an adorable parody of Pikachu, he is a sociopathic killing machine (this is his in-show description).
• The hero species, the Noops and Wuts in The Dreamstone. And then there's also the "ferocious" Wottles.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Parodied with the Gigglepies, big-eyed, Carebear-esque creatures who speak entirely in rhyme. It's eventually revealed that they are actually alien conquerors who enslave worlds with their hypnotic cuteness.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Several of the housemates come off as this, such as the one-time character Crackers, recurring background character Fluffer Nutter, the friend Wilt helps in Good Wilt Hunting, etc... Berry is a subversion, World from Destination: Imagination has shades of it, certain characters like Eduardo come off as this, but more of a Gentle Giant-type. Even Bloo, for as much as a Attention Whore he is, has shades of this. As Madame Foster pointed out in the pilot episode, Bloo's design is unique yet simple and is absolutely adorable. This makes him one of the most wanted imaginary friends at Foster's, and it's been shown that Bloo is at risk of being immediately adopted if Mac is even slightly late with his daily visits.
• Futurama:
  • Nibbler probably qualifies — he's pretty weird looking, but he's small and squeaky enough to make the tough, no-nonsense captain Leela go to pieces and adopt him as a beloved pet. He later gets a little red cape and diaper. It turns out that his entire species is sapient, and uses their cuteness as a ploy to infiltrate places where the local species is bigger and uglier as part of a giant conspiracy.
  • In the episode "The Problem with Popplers", the Popplers themselves, as they are actually the young of the sentient, not to mention angry Omicronians.
  • The horror that is the Lovey Bears in "Love and Rocket". Supposedly just stuffed toys made by Romanticorp, the owners reveal that rather than manufacturing them, it's actually cheaper to genetically engineer real teddy bears, which are raised in the Lovey Forest until their first birthday. Then scientists find the cutest, kill them, and stuff them full of fire-retardant "love fluff". Even Bender looks appalled by this.
• Gravity Falls has Waddles, Mabel's beloved pet pig.
• Happy Tree Friends uses this trope to hide the true premise of the show that revolves around Cruel and Unusual Deaths.
• Jang Keng and Tekirai from Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, two adorable kittens who happen to share the same voice actresses as their owners.
• Hilda: Twig the deerfox is a Loyal Animal Companion for the title character, and is not only useful to have around, but downright adorable.
• Chuck Jones had a penchant for ridiculously cute critters that brought out protective impulses in unlikely characters — like the kitten to bulldog Marc Anthony, or the penguin to Bugs Bunny. Early in his career he did shorts which starred ridiculously cute critters, such as Sniffles the Mouse among others. It wasn't until hanging around with the likes of Tex Avery that he began to use more humor.
• Guano from Kappa Mikey. Of course, it's obvious since he's a parody of Pikachu.
• Let's Go Luna!: Carmen's pet hamster Honey. She's just this little yellow ball of fur with shiny eyes and buckteeth and the sweetest possible voice.
• Most of the Sweetie-Pies from Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart count, but especially Adorabat. Her name says it all.
• Molly of Denali: In "Bye Bye Birdie," Molly and Trini can't help but Squee over the pufflings (baby puffins). They're adorable indeed.
• The main character from the upcoming animated short "Moom" by Tonko House who has long ears. The trailer speaks for itself.
• My Gym Partner's a Monkey: Ding-Bang Panda from the episode "Bear of Bad News" is an absolutely adorable panda cub. However, this turns out to just be a disguise for banned Charles Darwin Elementary student Larry Raccoon, who in all fairness, is kinda cute as well.
• Thanks to good art design in an unapolagetic Fantasy Kitchen Sink-slash-Sugar Bowl, it's hard to find characters in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic that aren't exceptionally cute. Special mention goes to Fluttershy, whose sheer adorability is enough to make anyone smile.
  • "Rainbow Roadtrip" manages to invoke this trope with a spider, of all creatures.
• The Owl House:
  • King is already pretty cute on his own, but his infant self we meet in "Echoes of the Past" is even more adorable, scampering around like a puppy and making pretend kingdoms out of toys and rocks.
  • Palismen. They are Bond Creatures carved from Palistrom wood, who come to life after a witch speaks their deepest wish, subsequently bonding with that witch for life, and all of them take the form of small, adorable animals. Special mention goes to Owlbert, Flapjack, and Stringbean, who take the forms of a small, round owl, an equally small and round cardinal, and a snake-shifter with a permanent smile and cat-ears respectively.
• Baby Butter from PB&J Otter, who has the appearance of a cute teddy bear. Even more when she's dressed like a sugarplum
• A plot point in Penguins of Madagascar; Dave becomes evil because penguins in general are so cute they keep stealing his attention everywhere he goes. Near the end of the movie, Private uses his cuteness to save the day, and in the stinger Mort uses his to change Private. For examples that aren't in-universe, there's the four younger, smaller versions of the main penguins in the beginning, especially Private, who's newly hatched and pretty much just a ball of white and grey feathers.
  • The Penguins of Madagascar has Mort the mouse lemur and Eggy the duckling. Private probably qualifies as well - he's made even King Julien go "Awwwww". Private manages to attain a level weaponizable cuteness in one episode. Naturally, Skipper takes advantage.
• Peter's sister Cottontail on the CGI animated Peter Rabbit easily ticks most of the boxes. Big head with big eyes and big ears? Check. Otherwise overall small size? Check. Soft and huggable looking? She's a young little bunny! Add in cute little yellow ear bows and you've got the complete package.
• Like the Futurama example above, the Phineas and Ferb episode "Meapless in Seattle" has the alien Mitch become a being so cute that he can entrance people, including Phineas.
• The Powerpuff Girls had Beebo, a bio-engineered hamster-like creature created as a pet. Unfortunately, overfeeding it caused it to become a giant monster who ate everything in sight. Even then it was still very cute.
  • The 2016 reboot episode "Escape from Monster Island" gives us Frederick, a rhino-looking monster the girls meet when they arrive on said island.
• In Rainbow Rangers Anna Banana's gadget is Super Stuffie Wuffie, a toy that's so cute anyone who hugs it can only sit and cuddle things.
• Sunspot from Ready Jet Go! definitely qualifies. He's a hybrid of a kangaroo, bunny, and raccoon with the personality of a dog or a cat, and has a stuffed animal-like quality to him.
• Rocko the wallaby from Rocko's Modern Life, as he has a cute and friendly personality to match.
• Once The Simpsons were at a petting zoo and saw a cute little lamb with big eyes. They all let out an "Aw!", then saw an even littler lamb with even bigger eyes. They let out a bigger "AWWW!!", then saw the littlest lamb with the biggest eyes, and let out the biggest "AWWWW!!!" of all. Then the first lamb walked in front of the third one, and Homer shoved it out of the way. Video clip here.
• All the slugs in Slugterra. In their proto-form, they're adorable little cartoon slugs with big eyes and bright colors. When shot into attack mode, they become much more intimidating. And ghouls are just creepy with Red Eyes, Take Warning and Scary Teeth.
• Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea has Triggies, tiny robots with smiling faces produced by Tehrig for maintenance purposes. Children in Arkadia love to play with them.
• While no one is certain what he is (not even himself), Peri from Spliced, with his big eyes, huge grin, and buck teeth, seems to be a favorite among female fans.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Gary is such a sweet little snail, and tends to be the Only Sane Man around his owner's antics.
• Given their cat like mannerisms the Loth Cats in Star Wars Rebels most people in the show find them cute. Minus the two stormtroops who got their helmets mauled for shooting at them.
• Lil' Sneezer from Tiny Toon Adventures, a cute little baby mouse with some really bad allergies.
• Toon Bops: All the animals in this show are, to put it bluntly, adorable.
• The three main characters in "We Baby Bears" are, like the title suggests, tiny adorable baby bears
• The Pixies from Winx Club are tiny, adorable chibish all-female humanoids.
  • There's also Bloom's pet blue rabbit Kiko, and the fairy pets.
  • The Undines and Selkies also fit this trope.
• The baby animals in Word Party. They're designed so cute that the entire show can be declared this.

Real Life

You may notice that most of the creatures above are based off of real biological animals. This is not a mistake. Notable examples on planet Earth^note Although any animal can be considered this include:

• Pandas, both the clumsy, bamboo-eating panda bears and the fluffy raccoon-like red pandas, are among the cutest and most popular animals in existence. It helps that panda bears have black fur patches that make their eyes look ridiculously huge.
• Though they get a bad reputation, bats qualify all the same, particularly if you get a good look of their mouse-like face and Puppy-Dog Eyes. For extra cute, here's a video of a bat eating a banana and a video of one squeaking while being petted.
  • Honduran white bats look like tiny puffballs with wings, black eyes, and a yellow leaf-shaped nose. They are also known as one of the bats that make tents out of leaves which they huddle under together.
• Fennec Foxes◊. They're much smaller than most foxes and have ridiculously oversized ears. Basically, they're the vulpine equivalent of a Chihuahua.
• White, fluffy arctic foxes as well. Good luck surviving this video without dying from Cuteness Overload.
• The Japanese Dwarf Flying Squirrel, Pteromys momonga, is probably the most ludicrously cute creature on the face of the planet. It's pretty much just a furry ball with eyes. See the links below for squee-worthy examples:
  • Cutest Thing on the Planet
  • Cute Spotting
• Jumping spiders. It says a lot that this little critter was used as a basis for Joltik, a Pokémon considered ridiculously cute. There are pictures around of jumping spiders wearing water droplets as hats◊ but Uda Dennie, the photographer whose pictures became famous on the internet freely admitted that he put the droplets on the spiders himself. Still cute though.
• Marmosets◊ are among the most adorable of monkeys, being small and having pug-like faces.
• Baby emperor penguins compensate for size with fluffiness.
• Aardwolves.◊The smallest species of hyena that feed primarily on termites, ants, and other insects. Other species of hyena instead fall under Ugly Cute or Creepy Cute when they don't fall under Heinous Hyena^note Although hyena cubs may play this trope straight, with many people finding them riculously cute, as despite being vicious predators, and stereotyped as the Unpleasant Animal Counterpart to lions, they are actually very intelligent and social animals.
• Babies, period. Given that babies of nearly all vertebrates, from mammals and birds to even snakes and sharks share a number of similar features compared to adults, like oversized heads and eyes, scientists speculated that we're as a species genetically hardwired to find such features cute.
• The "sand cat◊" of Afghanistan is easily the least intimidating of the wild cats. Their heads and ears are larger by comparison to their bodies than those of house-cats, and their faces are wider, but their bodies are smaller. Even the adults look like kittens! Oh... and they are vicious hunters who eat venomous snakes.
• The black-footed cat is the smallest wild cat in Africa, and the adult is as small as, or even smaller than, an average house-kitten. The black-footed cat kitten hits a cuteness level that shouldn't even be possible.
• The ocelot, a species of South American wild cat, looks exactly like a scaled-up housecat with a leopard fur.
• Sloths look like a cross between small bears, monkeys, and piglets and constantly have a smile on their faces. They are also known to make adorable squeaking sounds.
• Baby crocodilians, in contrast to the more fearsome adults, count as this. While sharing many of the "cute" characteristics with other animals (bright, cartoony eyes, and a tiny snout that would make them look not out of place in Bambi), they can even chirp like baby birds!
• Baby dinosaurs. Many fossils of young dinosaurs have been found and they're thought to be as cute as buttons when they were alive. In fact, its been theorized that baby tyrannosaurs were covered in down.
• Owls are very cute looking for birds-of-prey due to their big heads, large eyes facing forwards, and relatively small beaks. Saw-whet owls◊ in particular have been known to make hardened ornithologists explode into rainbow confetti and little pink hearts.
• Kookaburras, despite their sonic infamy, are short, stout little fellas◊ even as adults. But the babies are the closest nature has come to making a real life Pokémon.
• Chinchillas. Take a mouse with bunny legs, but make it fluffy. No, fluffier. Keep going. Little more. If you're picturing basically a poofy gray cloud with big ears and eyes, little paw hands in front with big feet in back, and the softest fur you can possibly imagine, you've got the general gist.
• Mouse deer!◊ (Also known as chevrotains.) They are tiny, tiny deerlike hooved critters on spindly legs, with bitty little tusks in their mouths that read as Cute Little Fangs. What can be cuter?
• The hyrax◊ is a round, furry critter with stubby legs and big eyes that looks like a guinea pig despite being more closely related to elephants.
• Harp seals, especially the pups◊. Too bad they get clubbed to death for their fur.
• Corgis◊ are dogs with stubby legs, satellites for ears, and heart butts. There are countless internet videos of their adorable antics.
• The Ila Pika◊ is not only one of the most elusive animals out there ^note having been sighted and documented for the first time in 1983 only to not be sighted again (up to the point where it began to become a bit of a cryptozoon) until more than three decades later but possibly also one of the most ridiculously adorable. Just picture a fluffy little rabbit with a teddy bear's face.◊ So sweet, you'll have to get an insulin shot.
• Quokkas. Always smiling, always having fun, always curious. No picture of a Quokka doesn't look cute.
• Samoyeds. Huskies but fluffier and all-white. Not so much a cute dog but more a borking cloud of adorable.
• The desert rain frog. Not only does it look cute, it makes a sound that can best be described as "a squeaky kitten."
• Chickadees. They're considered adorable, even relative to other small, cute songbirds.
  • Even among small cute songbirds, kinglets (AKA goldcrests, firecrests, etc.) are some of the few that rival chickadees in cuteness. And much like chickadees, they can be feisty as hell.
  • Likewise, European Robins are very cute and are beloved by birdwatchers due to their prettiness and being relatively easily befriended by human. They are quite territorial among themselves though.
• Hummingbirds◊ are very cute, with their small size, hyperactive behavior, iridescent bright colors and drinking nectar from flowers. They're the closest thing to real life fairies.
• Small, bipedal ornithopod dinosaurs like Hypsilophodon and Dryosaurus are often restored this way due to their large eyes and small beaky snouts. Some speculate they may even had plumage.
• The tiny, muppet-like pterosaurs known as Anurognathids were also really cute. Take a look!◊ Considering they were essentially the pterosaur equivalent of bats, with big heads and big eyes, this isn't surprising.
• Pygmy Falcons, since they're smaller than pigeons and even the fluffy adults could pass for baby falcons.
• The humble guinea pig◊. When not being used as a laboratory rodent, it's a precious pet, an adorably cute tailless ball of fluff that rarely bites and makes soft, pleasing noises. Sounds a lot like a tribble.
• Manatees. Much like Walruses, but they live in warm water and exude Big Fun cuteness.
• Rabbits. Those ears... It also helps that they are incredibly soft.
  • Viscacha, are technically closer related to chinchillas, which as ridiculously cute on their own merits, but look like rabbits with long bushy tails.
• Long-tailed tits◊ are small, plump birds that look like little fluffballs with tails. The Japanese long-tailed tits◊ (shima enaga), which are native to Hokkaido is an especially adorable version because of their unspeckled face.
• Some cephalopods have been known to make scientist go goo-goo ga-ga, such as this octopus◊ from the Opisthoteuthis genus (scientists are even considering formally naming it Adorabilis), this stubby squid (one scientist compared it to a kid's toy), and this shy dumbo octopus (especially when it covered its head with its tentacles).
• In spite of its Inherently Funny Name, the North American woodcock is definitely a cute bird, with big shiny eyes, a funny-shaped head/beak, an extremely fluffy body, and short, twig-thin legs. It also makes the most hilarious eeping noises and has a rather goofy back-and-forth bobbing walk.
• Capybaras. They have perpetually "chill" expressions that make them look like Mellow Fellows 24/7, even and especially when they're hanging out in Japanese hot springs. They're Gentle Giants of the animal kingdom to boot, being the largest rodents alive today.
• The slow loris◊ is tragically a case of this going horribly wrong; the appearance of this critter has made a demand for them as exotic pets, which is threatening the conservation of this already endangered species, and because they are one of the few venomous mammals they will have to have their teeth ripped out to be suitable pets. The majority will also shortly die in transit and in captivity from poor care.
• Ducks, and especially ducklings◊, which are so tiny and fluffy that one often feels the urge to put them in their pocket.
• Bumblebees. Fuzzy, fat, so gentle they don't mind being poked, and only want to pollinate flowers.
• The Dik-Dik◊ is one of the smallest species of antelope and has distint eyelashes around big bright eyes, dainty little boundy legs, a mohawk and a twitchy snouth that inflates slightly when they make their whistly calls. And the males have tiny little horns and don't even really fight over territory, just feinting at each other until one runs away.
• The royal antelope is the smallest antelope, period. Everything about it is tiny and delicate aside from its huge doe eyes; it looks almost like a mouse on mini-antelope legs, or a deer from a Moe series.
• Wallabies, pretty much a smaller, chubbier version of a kangaroo.
  • A remarkably large part of the marsupial order Diprotodondia is made up of what look like ambulatory plush toys. Along with wallabies, the order includes the aforementioned quokka, the koala◊ (basically a living teddy bear), the wombat (which resembles a ground-dwelling koala◊), and Australian species of possums (many of whom are rather friendlier-looking◊ than their North American namesakes).
• Pythons, especially ball pythons, are known to be one of the cute snakes due to having round eyes, chubby coils, a cat-like smile, and the tendency to curl up.
  • Another one of the rare snake species that gets attention as cute is the hognose snake, which has big eyes, a short upturned nose (hence the name) and some fun-to-watch behaviors like rattling their tails and puffing out their necks to scare predators away, or just playing dead if that doesn't work.
• Tarsiers◊, tiny inches-tall tree-dwelling primates with HUGE eyes. Though they can verge into Creepy Cute as their eyes resemble Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises and can't move in their sockets, making them look perpetually shocked.
• The galago or bush baby is another big-eyed, big-eared, pointy-nosed not-quite-a-monkey, made doubly endearing by its curious behavior and little human hands.
• The Grass Mud Horse. On a meta-level, it even qualifies as Badass Adorable, since it has been picked up as a meme, figuratively fighting Internet censorship in China.
• Rosy-faced lovebirds◊. Miniature parrots with big eyes, a permanent smile and Luminescent Blush. Even their name is adorable!
• The Shiba Inu, the breed of dog that inspired the Doge meme.
• Alaskan Malamute puppies. They look like toasted marshmallows on legs. And are FLOOOOOOOOFY!
• For a shark, at least, the thresher shark has a startlingly Moe face, with large staring eyes, a small mouth angled into a nervous frown and teeth almost too tiny to be seen, making it look not only harmless but worried or embarrassed. This is the shark in the "shy shark" meme.
• Provided they aren't showing you their teeth, bears◊ are adorable despite, or possible even because of their size. There is a reason teddy bears are based on them.
• Many species of moths (e.g. silk moths, maple moths) literally look like felted toys of themselves, and some come in cartoonishly bright colors. Even the cutesiest versions of Mothra aren't an exaggeration.
• You wouldn't think a slug of all creatures could possibly qualify as this, would you? Say hello to Costasiella kuroshimae, aka the Leaf Sheep Sea Slug. Its head looks like a cartoon of a sheep or a cow, and the rest of its body resembles some sort of leafy bush. Cool fact: it absorbs chloroplasts from the algae it eats and incorporates them into its body, making it one of the few animals in the world capable of photosynthesis.
• Shih Tzu's◊ just try looking into their eyes and not have your heart melt.
• Skunks. They're like a cross between a cat and a ferret, and they have the fluffiest tails! Even their warning system for you know what is like a cute little dance. And it's truly endearing when you encounter a family of them on the move. No wonder some people keep them as pets.
• Viverrids are pretty cute across the board, but special mention goes to the genets, who could aptly be described as a combination between a tabby cat and a ferret, with the playful personality to match.
  • The same goes for their Madagascar relatives, the euplerids. Perhaps the most notable example is the fanaloka, who resembles an adorable fox with the eye-catching body patterns of a civet. Even the fossa, despite often being seen as a vicious lemur-killer, is also very cute.
• The kinkajou◊, also known as the honey bear, is a frugivorous, arboreal cousin of the raccoon that’s native to the jungles of Central and South America. Imagine combining Winnie the Pooh with a New World monkey, and you've got the kinkajou.
• Tree-kangaroos, also known locally as boongarries might just be the cutest of all marsupials. They're like regular kangaroos, but smaller, fluffier, with brighter colorations, and they live arboreal lives akin to monkeys, as they evolved to fill a similar ecological niche in the jungles of New Guinea and Northern Australia.
• Hedgehogs. Small, chubby, with a pointy snout and beady little eyes, and they curl up into little balls when they’re scared! Aww!
• Brazilian tree porcupines are a classical example of how Mother Nature attempts to create something which is supposed to be scary and dangerous to wild animals only to melt the heart of humans. Picture a spiny critter with huge eyes, a pig-like nose, a prehensile tail and tiny clawed forepaws. Cute, isn't it? Add the ability to coo like a (human) baby and mimic human sounds and what you get is one of the cutest animals from South America. Unsurprisingly, Animals Wonders' numbers of subscribers skyrocketed after introducing the viewers to Kemosabe, a banana-loving male specimen.
• The Flapjack Octopus. They're small, have fins on their heads that resemble ears, and, of course, are so cute that one of their names is literally Adorabilis.

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