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posted by martyb on Sunday October 01 2017, @11:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the Bow-Wow-Meow-Squeak! dept.

The recent popularity of "designer" dogs, cats, micro-pigs and other pets may seem to suggest that pet keeping is no more than a fad. Indeed, it is often assumed that pets are a Western affectation, a weird relic of the working animals kept by communities of the past.

About half of the households in Britain alone include some kind of pet; roughly 10m of those are dogs while cats make up another 10m. Pets cost time and money, and nowadays bring little in the way of material benefits. But during the 2008 financial crisis, spending on pets remained almost unaffected, which suggests that for most owners pets are not a luxury but an integral and deeply loved part of the family.

Some people are into pets, however, while others simply aren't interested. Why is this the case? It is highly probable that our desire for the company of animals actually goes back tens of thousands of years and has played an important part in our evolution. If so, then genetics might help explain why a love of animals is something some people just don't get.

[...] The pet-keeping habit often runs in families: this was once ascribed to children coming to imitate their parents' lifestyles when they leave home, but recent research has suggested that it also has a genetic basis. Some people, whatever their upbringing, seem predisposed to seek out the company of animals, others less so.

Is the desire to keep pets really hard-wired in our DNA?


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  • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday October 01 2017, @08:03PM

    by acid andy (1683) on Sunday October 01 2017, @08:03PM (#575662) Homepage Journal

    As for a definition of "deserve", well it's an ethical concept. Other people have already written far more on the philosophy of ethics than I ever could.

    To state my point more clearly: If someone accepts that humans deserve a particular right then they should also accept that another species deserves that right if that species possesses equivalent qualities relevant to their enjoyment of that right or their suffering at being deprived of it. For the purposes of the logical argument, it doesn't matter what the "right" is nor what "deserves" is understood to mean nor which species it is, so long as those terms apply in a similar way to other species as to the human.

    Obviously humans are awarded some rights that wouldn't benefit some other species. What I'm getting at is I believe humans have enough in common with other species to make many "human rights" relevant.

    I should also point out when I mentioned the right not to be killed, I wasn't suggesting that other species should be arrested and punished when they predate. That wouldn't be workable and would just cause more harm. That raises an interesting problem though, that if we say violations of rights should only be opposed when committed by humans then it raises a lot of similar questions about what the relevant differences are between humans and other species. In that case perhaps the difference is that a lot of humans don't have a great need to inflict harm on other animal species and they can conceptually understand a right.

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