It’s Christmas time, the season of goodwill and reflection, so we’ll take time off from the stodgier issues of diseases and their cures. Instead, we’ll reflect a bit on the human-animal bond. Pets, or companion animals, have been with us since the dawn of civilization. In the case of dogs, well, they have been our friends for over 50,000 years. Cats, on the other hand, seem to have been associated with man only about 5,000 to 7,000 years. Interestingly enough, cat fossils have been found in Europe, Asia and Africa but not in the Americas.
When humans began domesticating wolves thousands of years ago, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Many dog lovers say their pets seem to know what their masters are thinking. A study in the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, suggests that this line of thought might be at least partially right. Something about the process of domestication seems to have given dogs the ability to ‘read’ certain human social behavioural patterns – something wolves, and even chimpanzees, can’t do.
Some scientists argue that, at least sociologically speaking, dogs (not chimps) are most like humans.