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When Did People Start Keeping Pets?


Claire.

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When Did People Start Keeping Pets?

Pets have been harnessed to humans for possibly tens of thousands of years.

Regardless of when pet ownership got started, our long attachment to these animals is still going strong. Americans own some 78 million dogs, 85 million cats, 14 million birds, 12 million small mammals and 9 million reptiles, according to pet industry statistics.

The archaeological and genetic record is being combed and analyzed for evidence of when and how the human-animal bond developed, not just to satisfy a craving for trivia, but because it says a lot about the evolution of human society, says Greger Larson, director of the University of Oxford’s palaeogenomics and bio-archaeology research network, which is leading a major international project to determine the origins of dogs.

Read more: Smithsonian

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It's probably more of a case of "when didn't they?" Can we imagine any small female of anything resembling H.s.s. who wouldn't glom onto a kitten or puppy as a very superior doll?

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