@Owl @pwm @georgia @subnetter @yakmacker I mean yeah but also no. If you're a halfway attractive woman and you cuddle a straight guy there's a 99.9% chance it's going to be an at least somewhat erotic experience for him.
People generally understand this, which is why in almost any culture this would cause people to see the two as flirting or being romantically involved and give significance to the fact that they're cuddling.
Maybe there's an element of conditioning and it's not purely natural that men are this way. (Even if something has taken hold in 99% of human cultures, it could still be *not* natural. Prime example is agriculture.) But I'm inclined to believe that it's just a natural aspect of human male physiology.
Also nobody here defined "cuddling." Maybe different people include different levels of intimacy in the definition.