You hear every day “I love my little puppy”. But why? Why is it that we love these furry little creatures? Today we’ll look at some theories about why we love our pets, in this edition of Pet Pointers.
So why is it that we are drawn to keeping other species as pets? Researchers, psychologist and poets have been asking this question for centuries and new theories may help answer the question.
More than 60 percent of Americans have at least one pet, most often a dog or cat. But what about reptiles, birds or small mammals. One study from researchers at the California Institute of Technology and University of California at Los Angles, analyzed brain activity while people were shown photos of a variety of animals and objects. The results suggest that there is an ancient part of our brain that reacts at the cellular level to animals regardless of size or species, dangerous or friendly. This ancient part of the brain identifies what we are seeing as an animal while the reasoning part of the brain decides what to do next.
