From the little fuzzy bunnies to the cuddly grizzly bears to the ever-graceful dolphins, our planet has no shortage of eye-catching, majestic, and absolutely adorable animals. However, we as humans are short on one rather elusive commodity: concrete answers. Everyone appears to have a different opinion on what makes animals cute, and so when you pop open your web browser and type “World’s Cutest Animal,” you will be bombarded with pictures from the eye-catching Quokka to the common housecat. The people want the truth, and on behalf of all of humanity, The Daily Howl™ has decided to step in and rectify this shameful solution scarcity with science and definitively calculate the World’s Cutest Animal™.

So, how does one go about this fully scientific calculation? Well, one would need the most powerful computing engine in the world: the human brain. That’s right, using technology predating all of human invention, we were able to create a comprehensive list of traits common in animals that will be used as the building blocks of our equation.

Now that we had our system, we needed input. Twenty-five Cute Animal Experts™ collaborated to present us with the data necessary to fully calculate the World’s Cutest Animal™. If you would like to contribute your own data, you may fill out this complementary form to make your voice heard.

Using the responses garnered from our Cute Animal Experts™, we can now create the formula for calculating the World’s Cutest Animal™. The World’s Cutest Animal™ must have most (if not all) of the traits that were highly rated by our Cute Animal Experts™, and must not include any of the low-rated traits. As such, we must remove all animals with low traits, or Aₗₜ, from the equation. Likewise, we must prioritize having more high traits, or HT, by valuing animals, or A, exponentially by the amount of highly-rated traits they have. Put into the form of an equation, the World’s Cutest Animal™ would be:

WCA™ = (Aₗₜ – A)ᴴᵀ

Using this equation, we subtract animals with low-rated traits from our overall pool of animals, then exponentially increase the value of each animal by the number of highly-rated traits they have.

But, at the end of the day, can a small set of data and one mathematical formula truly determine a comprehensive answer to such a universally debated question?

Yes. 

So, without further ado, I present to you the World’s Cutest Animal™:

That’s correct! The World’s Cutest Animal™ is, in fact, the Spotted Hyena™!

Now, we here at The Daily Howl™ have done our own long and arduous calculations, but we know that some people may disagree with our solution. The Spotted Hyena™ may be the scientific choice, but astute readers will recall that our result came from dozens of answers from Castaic residents like yourself. So, to honor the very people who made the science possible, we have made a special equation for anyone who has their own pick for the World’s Cutest Animal™. Have a look:

WCA™ = E, where E = Your Favorite Animal™.

Now you can go to your friends from other schools and tell them that The Daily Howl™ has mathematically proven that Your Favorite Animal™ is the World’s Cutest Animal™, and then you can send them the link to this article which they won’t read because it’s not their school’s paper, so your secret is safe with us.