How can you be certain that the cub looked with “admiration” at its mother? You can’t, because you’re projecting your morality onto nature. This reminds me of this quote by Nietzsche:

"The effeminate and cowardly term 'Nature' applied by the nature enthusiasts (who are devoid of any sense of the cruel, implacable, and cynical elements in even the 'most beautiful' aspects of nature) is a sort of attempt to glean from nature Christian morality's notion of what is 'humane'"