Falling for the fierce cuteness of the animal kingdom, from hummingbirds to koalas

Watching Gordon Buchanan's Super Cute Animals (Sunday, BBC1) is, any neurologist will tell you, very like doing loads of drugs.

Even watching the intro montage – someone patting a baby owl on the head, a hummingbird snoring, a baby sea-otter frolicking – causes my pupils to dilate, some drool to appear at the corner of my mouth and dopamine to flood my formerly stressed brain. It’s like having a pleasurable fit.

The premise of Super Cute Animals is pretty straightforward. Buchanan presents us with footage of the most delightful animals in the world, and because it's the BBC and not a teenager's YouTube channel, he gets boffins to explain the "hidden biology of these animal superstars".

Whoever came up with this programme is basically an evil genius. Buchanan is cute enough on his own (look at him paddling his little canoe; he’s just like a people!) but surround him with sea-otters and kittens and, to quote the internet: “I can’t even.”

First he goes to visit the panda, arguably the cutest of bears. We see slow-motion pandas falling off trees and cubs sneezing loudly. “You really are the most adorable panda in the world,” says Buchanan to a panda, but in a respectful way.

The panda, Buchanan tells us, was once a carnivore, but five million years ago it became a vegetarian, possibly when in college to impress a girl. Now it must eat bamboo 16 hours a day and is pretty much a hippy pacifist. Sadly, Buchanan doesn’t take this information where you’d expect, by feeding the panda some beef and giving it a gun to see what happens.

Instead, he theatrically holds a panda skull, no doubt sourced from an all-panda production of Hamlet, and explains that it's all the bamboo chewing that gives the panda its large teddyish head. Large features are, Buchanan explains, a hallmark of what we find cute.

“[They] trigger an emotional response . . . It’s the way we respond when we see our own babies . . . It’s what makes us go all gooey.”

“Gooey” is, I assume, a scientific word. Buchanan then insists that “cute response” is an actual term used by psychologists.

The next bit of footage is of a scientist tickling a tiny woodland creature with massive eyes. It’s Grammy nominated pop-star Ariana Grande.

"We can't get enough of this wide-eyed little gremlin," says Buchanan, accurately summing up her pop appeal. However, Ariana Grande also has a "dark side". The singer of Problem and One Last Time can secrete an oil from her elbow which, when mixed with her saliva "creates a deadly cocktail". To demonstrate Buchanan shows us footage of Ariana Grande catching a bird in her paws and biting its head off. I think it's from last year's MTV awards.

(It turns out I’ve been getting pop sensation Ariana Grande mixed up with natural marvel and internet sensation the slow loris. Apologies to both.)

Koalas and foxes

Luckily, it doesn’t stop there. Buchanan also patronises “the sonorous war-cry of an angry frog” (it’s pretty squeaky), contemplates the nectar-addiction of a snoring hummingbird, the “tree-cuddling” of a koala and looms over a big-eared fennec fox, a delightful looking beast who can hear a mouse’s heartbeat beneath the desert sand (yet struggles with even the most basic administrative tasks).

All the while Buchanan rhapsodises about their delightfulness in a manner that borders on harassment and continues to consult science folk to legitimise his obsessions.

This isn’t hard. It would appear the best minds of our generation are working on questions like “Just why is the sea-otter so furry?” (to trap a layer of warm air in its sea-faring fur) or “Why do cats purr?” (partly to manipulate you).

At one point some researchers even put a penguin on a mechanical treadmill to see what they can learn about its waddle. And what do they learn? They learn that it’s bloody adorable (they also learn that waddling is actually a very energy efficient way for a penguin to move).

It only occurs to me that the scientists on this programme may be mad scientists, when Buchanan introduces us to Dr Marina Davila-Ross who has spent the past few years tickling apes.

She says that she’s investigating “laughter” in animals, but I suspect that she started out tickling chimps purely for tickling chimps’ sake, but then had to justify her research grant. (“We need more than ‘I plan to tickle every goddamn animal in creation’, Dr Davila-Ross.”) When Buchanan starts to tickle primates, it is a beautiful thing. “[We’re] brothers from another mother,” he declares, regarding his simian sibling.

Anyway, this is an important programme, teaching us science stuff and revealing how irresistible animals and Gordon Buchanan can be. Also, on a more serious note, it provides us with yet more evidence that ugly animals deserve to die.

And finally, if you do not, when watching a particularly amusing animal, turn to the person next to you and say: “Why, I didn’t know you were in this programme,” congratulations, you are a grown-up. Now leave me be and get on with your sad, empty life.