A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Why do we have pets?

A new book suggests that we get a bio-psychological reward from them. Salon interviews the author:

Touch releases oxytocin in humans and animals. Oxytocin is one of the most powerful hormones that the body makes. This is a chemical that is responsible for social bonding.

When you pat your cat, you should be getting a release of oxytocin, as should your cat, too, that slows your heart rate down, lowers your stress response. You feel this warmth and this attachment, as does the cat. So you’re getting an emotional and a physiological anti-stress response. It’s a wonderful renewable system.

Read the rest here.

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3 responses to “Why do we have pets?”

  1. Rick Ritchie

    Hello Lee,

    I use the service LibraryThing and recently ran into the library of an author who writes a lot on animals. I read his book When Elephants Weep, which I greatly enjoyed. It contained a lot of anecdotes about intelligent animal behavior. In any case, I thought this would be a good occasion to give you a link to a listing of books. There are only about 250 books listed, but they look like titles you would enjoy seeing:

    http://www.librarything.com/profile/jeffreymasson

    Reply
  2. Lee

    Very cool! Thanks, Rick.

    Reply
  3. Dwight

    Through most of my life, though not at some critical times, I have “had” pets (actually, if anything, they have had me). But I resisted when my wife and daughter wanted to get a dog. I had all the old-man and father complaints, but I gave in.

    Within a week of bringing Krissie home (we adopted her through a rescue society for her breed), my wife claimed that she could see my blood pressure and stress drop — even physically — when I came home from work and dropped to the floor for some rough-housing with the wee beast.

    I have absolutely no doubt that dogs and cats (and I suppose other animals) minister to us much as the angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness. For that reason, my wife and I are (right now only half-jokingly) considering having the ashes of our dog interred with ours in the columbarium.

    Reply

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