One Of The World's Conundrums

What irony from the gods, what quirk of evolution, what sheer cosmic perversity has instilled in humans the propensity to turn into cooing piles of goo upon seeing even the most predatory animals, such as lions, due to sheer cutness? I know there's research that says that we've evolved an "Awww!" response to babies (something to do with the proportions of eyes to head and head to body and such) to make us more prone to protect and nurture the little horrors, and that's probably why certain animals, pandas for instance, are so incredibly cute to us, but does that explain why we find adult lions and bears and whales, and even certain kinds of reptiles and fish and even invertebrates, adorable?