gender differences in responses to types of user avatars

I'm not a UX designer by profession but I am currently working on something that requires a lot of considerations of usability. Currently, I'm trying to implement an avatar system that users will see but I want to make sure that it does not produce disproportionate effects on user responses to them. Specifically, I have designed some animal based avatars but I was wondering if there are any known results about any possible gender differences in responses to avatars that may be overly "cute"? Thanks for any responses.