pets as stress reliever

There's something incredibly comforting about coming home after a long day at work and being greeted with wet, slobbery kisses. For many people, interacting with a pet is the ultimate antidote to a stressful day. In fact, in one study, when people were presented with stressful tasks in four different situations -- alone, with their spouse, with their pet, or with both their spouse and their pet -- they experienced the lowest stress response and the quickest recovery in the situation where they were only with their pet.

Psychologists explain our affection for our pets in terms of several different possible contributing factors. First, humans have been breeding the species that we adopt as pets most frequently to have the physical characteristics that appeal to us, such as large eyes in relation to the head, in particular. All dogs are members of the same species (Canis familiaris), whether the short, squished noses of brachycephalic canine species like those of the Pug and Bulldogs, the floppy ears of the Labradors and Retrievers, or the skin folds of the Shar Pei, those characteristics were all products of artificial selection by human beings. They appeal to us the way they do simply because we bred them in the first place as much for those physical features that we consider so “cute” as for their other breed-specific characteristics and capabilities. The fact that we typically “infantilize” our pets (meaning that we treat them like infants throughout their entire lives) may have a lot to do with the emotions they evoke in us in conjunction with way the physical characteristics that we have bred into them appeal to our subconscious nurturing instincts.