tgrotvedt's Journal: Thoughts on a quirk of evolution...

I enjoy speculating about the deeper things in life, like the definition of consciousness, why we are here, how we got here etcetera. In a few of these types of conversations I've had, Darwinism has been brought into question many times. There are alot of things we do, and features we possess that can't be explained by Darwin's theory, survival of the fittest.

One in particular that I have discussed with people is the keeping of pets. From a purely survival standpoint, pets can appear totally unnessecary, even a disadvantage (you have to feed pets, in addition to yourself). I have many times wondered how the fondness of pets ever crept into our genepool, why our pet-keeping ancestors had any advantage at all. Well, I have a bit of a theory about this...

Have you ever noticed that pets are somehow theraputic? How taking care of a horse, a cat, a dog (and to a lesser extent even fish and plants) can be psychologically rewarding/fulfilling? I have.

In a hunter-gatherer situation, psychological well-being and "togetherness" plays quite an important role in survival. It helps one focus, and be more functional. Now, seeing that keeping pets can make people more cool, calm and collected so-to-speak, I think that in the long run, they also make us more efficient hunter-gatherers.

I invite you to discuss this, it could get interesting. And to the moderators, don't be too free with the "off topic" moderation, I don't mind if the subject... evolves a little (no pun intended).

Actually...

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they were quite handy as an emergency food source.

Naw, I'm just kidding. Yeah, I think pets are good for their owners' mental health. I worked briefly at an organization which took people's pets and animals from shelters to places like nursing homes and hospitals for the residents to interact with. It really helped a few of those people.