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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?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday October 03 2017, @11:24PM
Generally this happens when human interference has disrupted an ecosystem. The best option of course would be to reintroduce the natural predators to cull the deer herds, but people tend to be terrified of predators so we end up with a sort of farming of deer by and for people. The natural ups and downs of the cycle are disrupted that way and the ecosystem still suffers, those little ups and downs in predator/prey populations are an overlooked vital part of the natural cycle, human management of such things has a long way to go in understanding the actual process.