“Not everyone would give up pets before giving up loved ones - Philadelphia Daily News” plus 1 more |
| Not everyone would give up pets before giving up loved ones - Philadelphia Daily News Posted: 27 Jan 2011 04:59 AM PST Posted on Thu, Jan. 27, 2011 Your sweetheart or your pet. Who would you choose to dump if one had to go? Most current pet owners said that they would hold on to their spouse or significant other (84 percent), but a sizable 14 percent picked their pet, according to an AP-Petside.com poll. Put Sally Roland, 53, of Omaha, Neb., down in the dog-first column. "I'm divorced, so that might explain it," she joked. The unmarried, like Roland, are more apt to choose their pet over their mate - 25 percent among unmarried pet owners versus 8 percent among the married. Count Fidel Martinez, 30, of Akron, Ohio, as forever loyal to Killer. That's his mix-breed, 100-pound rescue dog. "I would absolutely give up my girlfriend for him," Martinez said. "I know it sounds insane, but I've had numerous relationships with women. My dog has never let me down." For the record: Martinez and Killer have been together for seven years. Martinez and his girlfriend have been together for four. The two-legged pair have no immediate plans to cohabitate, he said, but she does like the dog a lot. Women are far more apt than men to say the human-pet choice would be a tough one (40 percent among women compared with 26 percent among men). Both genders were equally likely to go with their spouse or significant other, according to the poll conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. There was also no difference between dog and cat owners: 35 percent of each said the choice would be a hard one and more than eight in 10 would choose their spouse. Urban dwellers (47 percent) are more apt to say they'd have a difficult time choosing than did suburbanites (35 percent) or rural residents (25 percent). About six in 10 adults (57 percent) have had to give up a pet at some point in their lives, with current pet owners (64 percent) a bit more likely to have done so. The most common reasons had to do with the pet's health: 69 percent said their pet was too sick to live on, 52 percent too sick to be cared for at home. But there are other reasons as well, including about one in 10 (9 percent) who, like David Rosenthal of Missouri City, Texas, said that their animal was too dangerous to keep. One-third (34 percent) of current pet owners said that it would be "extremely" or "very" difficult if they were forced to choose between a pet and a family member who became allergic. Another 20 percent would find the choice somewhat difficult and 46 percent said that it would be "not too difficult" or "not difficult at all." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Early Humans Preferred Foxes as Pets - Softpedia Posted: 28 Jan 2011 03:39 AM PST New archaeological evidences would appear to suggest that the dog became man's best friend millennia after it was first domesticated. Data collected from a prehistoric burial ground in Jordan indicated that early humans preferred the company of foxes to that of dogs. The conclusion was drawn after investigators looked closely at all the remnants found buried at the Jordan site. One of the most amazing discoveries was that of a human being buried next to a fox. Studies determined that a part of the fox was then transferred to another grave, that was located nearby. Experts believe that this is indubitable proof that foxes played an important role in the prehistoric human society. Archaeologists with the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, believe that this type of funeral rite hints at a very close and deep connection that may have existed between humans and foxes at the time the individuals filling those two graves died.In a paper the experts published yesterday, January 27, they argue that the fox found in the grave was most likely a pet, and that it was buried with its human in order to accompany them in the afterlife. This research provides evidence that foxes were preferred to dogs long before the canines began being used to hunt them. The finding is the first to attest to the burial of an animal with its master. The northern Jordan site is called Uyun-al-Hammam and is in fact a 16,500-year-old cemetery. This means that the fox uncovered by the researchers was buried 4,000 years before the first known human-dog burial. The event also took place 7,000 years ahead of the next known fox burial. Overall, it could be that this animal funeral hints at the growing cultural sophistication that our ancestors were going through at that point in time, the experts write in the journal PLoS ONE. "The burial site provides intriguing evidence of a relationship between humans and foxes which predates any comparable example of animal domestication," explains Leverhulme Center for Human Evolutionary Studies expert Dr Lisa Maher. "What we appear to have found is a case where a fox was killed and buried with its owner. Later, the grave was reopened for some reason and the human's body was moved," she adds. "But because the link between the fox and human had been significant, the fox was moved as well, so that the person, or people, would still be accompanied by it in the afterlife," the expert goes on to say. This type of sophistication was usually associated with the farming societies of the Neolithic era, which did not appear until several thousand years later. On the other hand, the Cambridge team says, foxes were not preferred to dogs for a long time. In all likelihood, early humans never fully managed to domesticate the animals, and so they turned to the more malleable dogs instead. It took several millennia to fully domesticate them, but the effort was well worth it. Follow the editor on Twitter @tudorvieru This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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