Really?

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Is it puzzling that humans have pets?

Pets have long posed an evolutionary enigma for researchers. We have to feed them, house them, cut their toenails, clean their teeth and scratch behind their ears. A relationship like that could be considered a poor return on investment.

“Lavishing resources on members of other species we have no evolutionary stake in seems to make no evolutionary sense,” said Hal Herzog, a psychologist and animal expert at Western Carolina University who was not involved with the research. Yet many cultures across the world have pets and cherish them dearly.

Does it really seem to make no evolutionary sense?

The many practical reasons for having pets (rodent control, guarding, protection, assistance in hunting and so on) aside, doesn’t well-being/happiness make evolutionary sense?

Maybe this is just journalistic over-simplification of what makes evolutionary sense.

“There are theories that pet-keeping began either because animals were useful for tasks like hunting and protection or because humans have a natural tendency to care for and bond with other living beings,” said Zoë Goldsborough, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior who was not involved with the research.

Or both, ffs. Your dog can help with hunting and guard the pack and be a companion.

Maybe this is just drastically oversimplified for a broad audience, but it seems simplified to the point of absurdity.

Comments

One response to “Really?”

  1. Papito Avatar
    Papito

    I find it hard to believe that Herzog has ever had a cat. In my family we’ve always had cats, and only the last couple were ever purchased. In most cases, we didn’t adopt the cats, they adopted us. They just showed up one day and we made a deal – they would keep the mice away and we would feed and pet them. I’ve got two cats lazing about the house somewhere, and they have both proved themselves as mousers.

    Mice are a pain in the neck. If I didn’t have concrete, and refrigerators, and locking plastic bins to hold my dry goods, they would be a bigger pain in the neck. If I had a dirt floor and nothing but burlap sacks to hold my food, and no cats, then my house would be positively crawling with mice.

    Cats are obligate carnivores. They will not eat your corn, your rice, your wheat, or your beans. Mice will eat all those things. And cats will eat mice.

    There is no mystery here why people would want cats around. Only someone ignorant of both history and housekeeping would fail to understand.

    And “care for and bond with” seems like projection of modern bourgeois norms into the far past. Sure, some people are going to cut Fluffy’s nails, and take Fluffy to the vet, and buy Fluffy special food, and comb Fluffy, and treat Fluffy for fleas, and get Fluffy kidney surgery… but that just isn’t the way most people even today treat cats. I’m quite sure that if ancient man got to the bottom of the grain sack and game was scarce, he would just eat the cat.

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