Dogs are not simply “fur babies” or best friend but a blend of both, researchers have found in a study they say highlights the special status of pets.
The study suggests owners rate their relationship with their dogs as being as satisfying or more satisfying than their closest human relationships. However, the researchers did not find the owner-dog bond was stronger in people with weaker human relationships.
“Our results showed that it [the bond] does not replace human relationships but offers something different, a unique combination of characteristics to complement what we receive from the human side of our social network,” said Borbala Turcsan, first author of the study from Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the team described how they used social media to recruit 717 dog owners over two periods, from April 2011 to February 2013, and from January 2022 to December 2023. About 20 percent of participants had children and about 80 percent had a romantic partner.
They were asked to rate their relationship with a pet, child, romantic partner, closest relative and best friend on 13 characteristics including companionship, intimacy, reliability, satisfaction and power balance.
Participants were asked how often they protected and looked out for the individual, spent fun time with them, argued and found the individual got on their nerves, as well as how sure they were the relationship would last and who was more dominant.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The team found owners rated their dogs higher for companionship and needing nurture than their closest relative, best friend and romantic partner, while they experienced fewer negative interactions with their dog than with their child, romantic partner or closest relative.
Owners also rated their dogs higher than their best friends and closest relatives for areas including affection, reliability and support. However, when it came to intimacy, romantic partners trumped canines.
And they reported greater relationship satisfaction with their dogs than with their closest kin or best friend. There was little difference in satisfaction when the bond was judged against one with a romantic partner or child.
Photo: AP
But when it came to power, owners’ relationships with their dogs showed the greatest imbalances. The researchers noted that while children were raised to become independent adults, dogs required ongoing guidance and supervision.
“Dogs offer a highly positive relationship with minimal conflict, strong social support, and the unique opportunity to have full control over another living being’s life,” said Prof Eniko Kubinyi, senior author of the research.
Turcsan added that while the dog-owner relationship was most similar to that between a child and a parent, a crucial feature — aside from the power asymmetry — was that dogs had much lower levels of antagonism and conflict with their owners compared to children, something the team noted was similar to best friendships.
While the study has limitations, including that participants were self-selecting, the researchers said the findings highlighted the flexibility of the roles dogs played.
“A dog can be a playmate for children, a good flatmate, best friend for young singles, a surrogate child for young couples, a sibling figure once children arrive, a grandchild for “empty-nester” parents, and perhaps the most important source of social support for elderly people living alone,” said Kubinyi.
Turcsan agreed: “Dogs can be (almost) anything we want them to be.”
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
Perched on Thailand’s border with Myanmar, Arunothai is a dusty crossroads town, a nowheresville that could be the setting of some Southeast Asian spaghetti Western. Its main street is the final, dead-end section of the two-lane highway from Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city 120kms south, and the heart of the kingdom’s mountainous north. At the town boundary, a Chinese-style arch capped with dragons also bears Thai script declaring fealty to Bangkok’s royal family: “Long live the King!” Further on, Chinese lanterns line the main street, and on the hillsides, courtyard homes sit among warrens of narrow, winding alleyways and
RSS