Visual preferences across species: A comparative framework

Human preferences for visual features such as curvature, visual structure, biological motion, and color have rarely been studied from a comparative perspective, and are often interpreted as reflecting distinctively human aesthetic processes. We review evidence from primates, birds, fish, and insects showing that comparable preferences are widespread across animal species. These preferences often emerge early, sometimes without prior exposure, but remain highly flexible: they are shaped by developmental trajectories, experience, behavioral goals, multisensory input, physiological state, and ecological context. Mechanistic evidence suggests that these preferences emerge from interactions between species-specific sensory tuning and higher-order neural systems involved in attention, valuation, and action. These preferences help orient behavior toward ecologically relevant features of the environment, supporting foraging, oviposition, social attachment, and social learning. Together, these findings challenge the view that human visual preferences reflect uniquely human aesthetic processes. Instead, they suggest that such preferences are better understood as flexible outputs of perceptual and motivational systems that are widely distributed across species and have been reshaped by human evolution, development, and culture.