http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/03/why-do-we-love-pets/
interesting read for dog and cat lovers:
Ours is a pet-loving culture. Researchers spend a lot of time exploring what has become known as “human-animal interactions,” and the pet industry spends a lot of money promoting what it prefers to call the “human-animal bond.” But that concept might have been laughable a century ago, when animals served a more utilitarian role in our lives. And it was “deeply unfashionable” among scholars as recently as the 1980s, as John Bradshaw writes in his new book, “The Animals Among Us: How Pets Make Us Human.”
Bradshaw, an honorary research fellow at the University of Bristol in England, would know. He was trained as a biologist – one who began by studying animals, not people, and not their relationship. But he says his work on dog and cat behavior led him to conclude that he would never fully understand those topics without also considering how humans think about their animals. In 1990, he and a small group of other researchers who studied pet ownership coined a term for their field: Anthrozoology. Today, university students at a few dozen U.S. universities study the topic he helped pioneer.
more: http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/03/why-do-we-love-pets/
interesting read for dog and cat lovers:
Ours is a pet-loving culture. Researchers spend a lot of time exploring what has become known as “human-animal interactions,” and the pet industry spends a lot of money promoting what it prefers to call the “human-animal bond.” But that concept might have been laughable a century ago, when animals served a more utilitarian role in our lives. And it was “deeply unfashionable” among scholars as recently as the 1980s, as John Bradshaw writes in his new book, “The Animals Among Us: How Pets Make Us Human.”
Bradshaw, an honorary research fellow at the University of Bristol in England, would know. He was trained as a biologist – one who began by studying animals, not people, and not their relationship. But he says his work on dog and cat behavior led him to conclude that he would never fully understand those topics without also considering how humans think about their animals. In 1990, he and a small group of other researchers who studied pet ownership coined a term for their field: Anthrozoology. Today, university students at a few dozen U.S. universities study the topic he helped pioneer.
more: http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/03/why-do-we-love-pets/
