Companion Animal Psychology

Our summer reading list is all about play. Photo: MyImages-Micha/Shutterstock By Zazie Todd, PhD Why do animals play? In Dog Sense , John Bradshaw writes “In wild animals, play must promote survival; otherwise, evolution would select against it – a young animal that is playing out in the open is much more obvious to a predator than one sleeping in its den. However, the benefits of play do   not usually become apparent until months later, when they emerge in the form of better social integration or more sophisticated hunting techniques (to name but two, which vary from one species to another). Again, the simplest explanation is that play is self-rewarding: in other words – it is fun!” Our summer reading list includes links to articles on play in dogs, cats, rabbits, meerkats and humans. Enjoy! Why people and animals should take time out to play , by Dr. Anne Fawcett. Is your dog’s rough play appropriate? Barbara Smuts and Camille Ward, PhD, explain the diff...

Spending time observing an aquarium leads to improvements in mood and reductions in heart rate. Photo: ET1972/Shutterstock By Zazie Todd, PhD There are psychological benefits to watching fish and crustaceans in an aquarium, according to a new study by Deborah Cracknell et al. They observed people’s natural interactions with a marine life display, and took heart rate, blood pressure and questionnaire results from 84 experimental participants.  But the display wasn’t a fish tank that you could fit in your living room – it was a large exhibit at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, UK. Sitting and looking at the display led to significant reductions in blood pressure and heart rate. “Most of these gains occurred within the first five minutes,” write the authors.  The results are not due simply to sitting, they say, as experimental participants had a rest period before a curtain was opened to reveal the display. The researchers were able to take advantag...

And that toys are important in photographs of adoptable cats. Photo: Piyato/Shutterstock By Zazie Todd, PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. We all assume that internet photos and adverts play an important role in pet adoption these days, and now it’s possible to put a figure on it, at least for cats. 82.5% of people who adopted a cat from a shelter in Western New York said Petfinder strongly or moderately influenced their adoption. The length of time cats waited for adoption varied from 1 to 126 days. Cats whose Petfinder profiles were clicked more than once a day were typically adopted in 9 days, but cats with less than one click per day typically waited 23 days for a new home. The study, by Miranda Workman and Christy Hoffman (Canisius College), also looked at preferred features of adoptable cats. Coat colour made a big difference, with cream cats getting adopted in less than ten da...

A pet dog can reduce stress for parents of a child with autism spectrum disorder, according to a new study. Photo: Mat Hayward/Shutterstock By Zazie Todd, PhD This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to you. Research by Hannah Wright et al (University of Lincoln) finds that a family dog reduces stress in the caregivers of a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This result is especially striking because it applies to pet dogs rather than specially trained service dogs. But there are caveats, because a dog is not right for all families. The study looked at parents of children with ASD, and compared those who chose to get a dog to those who did not. Parents in the group that acquired a dog had significantly lower scores for total stress, parental distress, and for how difficult they thought their child was.  The change for parental distress was enough that many parents moved from a rating conside...