By Jeremy Hsu, LiveScience Senior Writer
02 August 2010

Our love of all things furry has deep roots in human evolution and may have even shaped how our ancestors developed language and other tools of civilization.

This "animal connection" compelled humans to learn about and care for fellow creatures, said Pat Shipman, a paleoanthropologist at Penn State University. She added that the behavior seems highly abnormal for other animals on the rare occasions that, say, captive tigers nurture pigs or vice versa.

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