The Human-Animal Bond, Serpell

The Human-Animal Bond
Oxford Handbooks Online

James A. Serpell
The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies
Edited by Linda Kalof
Subject: Political Science, Political Theory, Law, Law and

Politics
Online Publication Date: Jul DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199927142.013.31
2015
Abstract and Keywords
Social bonds between people and their pets are more popular than they have ever been.
Yet archaeological and anthropological evidence suggests that human-pet bonds have
existed throughout history, enduring despite their relative lack of practical utility or
material value for humans and, in this sense, presenting a challenge to evolutionary
theory. Citing abundant research, the chapter shows that the human-pet relationship
should be regarded as “mutualistic,” conferring adaptive benefits on both participants
For humans, animal companionship promotes social engagement and alleviates the
debilitating mental and physiological effects of psychosocial stress. Animal-assisted
therapeutic interventions for people with a variety of cognitive, emotional, and physical
disabilities are also becoming increasingly widespread. For animals, the human-animal
bond has opened a new ecological niche and allowed dramatic increases in population
size. However, the chapter also raises a number of ethical concerns related to animal
welfare, public health, and environmental impact.
Keywords: dogs, cats, pets, attachment, social support, oxytocin, animal-assisted intervention
Introduction
Human-animal bond is a popular umbrella term applied to the kinds of social attachments
that typically develop between people and their pets (or companion animals). Humans
can, of course, form this bond with other categories of animals, such as working dogs and
horses, or even laboratory rodents or dairy goats,1 but those attachments tend to be more
distant and may be actively avoided, perhaps because they tend to interfere both
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psychologically and morally with our ability to exploit such animals for nonbenign
purposes.2
Human-pet attachments are exceedingly widespread and popular. Estimates vary, but
Americans appear to keep roughly 75 million pet dogs and 80 million pet cats, not to
mention many million pet birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. According to a 2012
survey, about 63 percent of US households contain at least one pet, and 45 percent keep
more than one.3 In the European Union, the numbers are also impressive: 60 million
dogs, 80 million cats, and so on.4 Pet numbers are also increasing rapidly in a number of
developing nations, such as Brazil, Thailand, and Turkey (Euromonitor International,
2014).
Although pet keeping is probably more popular nowadays than at any time in the past, it
is clear that this intriguing human behavior is neither modern in origin nor confined to
more affluent, “westernized” societies.
Historical and Cultural Perspectives

Archaeological evidence suggests that human emotional attachments for animals may be
of considerable antiquity. Excavations at a pre-Natufian cemetery in Jordan have found
intriguing evidence of a human buried together with the remains of a “pet” fox some 14
to 17 thousand years ago.5 Somewhat more recently (12–14 thousand years ago) a
number of dog-human burials have been identified at sites in Germany and Israel, and a
cat-human burial dating from about 9.5 thousand years ago has been discovered on the
Mediterranean island of Cyprus.6 Clearly, the motives behind these early burials are
subject to various interpretations, but it seems reasonable to speculate that the decision
to bury the animal with the person implies awareness of a special relationship between
these individuals during their lives.
The idea that late Paleolithic and early Neolithic hunter-gatherers may have kept tamed
wild animals as pets is entirely consistent with the observed behavior of more recent
hunting and foraging peoples. According to numerous reports by explorers and
anthropologists, pet keeping among hunter-gatherers and subsistence horticulturalists is
(or was) the norm rather than the exception. These pets are typically captured as young
animals by hunters, and then adopted and cared for, especially by women and children.
Often, the animals are the objects of intense emotional attachments; they are well cared
for during life, and sometimes mourned and buried formally when they die. Strong moral
taboos against killing or eating pets also exist, even when the animal belongs to a species
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that is hunted routinely for meat.7 Indeed, pet keeping is so ubiquitous among
preagricultural societies that several authors have proposed that these early human-
animal bonds were the precursors to animal domestication.8 If this turned out to be the
case, pet keeping would need to be credited with initiating one of the most far-reaching
ecological and cultural revolutions in the history of our species.
The prevalence of pet keeping in the post-Neolithic and early archaic periods is difficult
to assess because of a scarcity of documentary evidence. However, available written and
artistic depictions suggest that the practice has been maintained throughout human
history, although its popularity may have waxed and waned somewhat unpredictably over
time and from place to place. Many prominent ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans
evidently kept pets of various types ranging from dogs and cats to cage birds, and even
fish. Pet dogs and cats were also frequent occupants of the imperial households of both
China and Japan. In Europe and colonial North America, pet keeping did not become
widely respectable until the eighteenth century. Medieval and Renaissance moralists and
theologians appear to have regarded most kinds of physical intimacy between people and
animals as morally suspect, and typically condemned the practice of keeping animals
exclusively for companionship.9 In extreme cases, indulging in human-animal bonds could
even attract accusations of witchcraft. In Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, it was widely believed that witches made use of “familiar spirits” as personal
agents of malefice. These “familiars” depended on the witch for protection and
nourishment and were commonly thought to take the form of small animals, such as cats,
dogs, mice, or toads. Any person already suspected of witchcraft could attract far greater
suspicion by displaying affection for a pet, and it is clear from the court records of the
period that evidence of pet ownership was commonly cited during witch trials.10
Perhaps because of such prejudices, pet keeping remained chiefly the province of the
upper classes and ruling élite until the early modern period when the emergence of
Enlightenment attitudes and an urban middle class saw the gradual spread of pets into
most sectors of Western society.11 This change in animal-related attitudes and behavior
can be partly attributed to the steady movement of Europeans and Americans out of rural
areas and into towns and cities at this time. This urban migration tended to distance
growing sectors of the population from direct involvement in the consumptive
exploitation of animals, thereby eliminating the need for value systems designed to
segregate humans and nonhumans into separate moral domains.12
The potential therapeutic or socializing influence of the human-animal bond was also first
recognized during this period. The English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), for
example, advocated the keeping of pets to encourage children to develop empathy and a
sense of responsibility for others. The York Retreat, the first mental institution to employ
pet animals as a therapeutic medium, was founded in England during the eighteenth
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century, and by the Victorian era, pet animals were a relatively established feature of
British mental institutions.13
The Value of the Bond

From an evolutionary perspective, the human-animal bond—or at least the practice of
keeping animals primarily as social companions—is somewhat paradoxical.14 Our
relationships with most domestic animals are fundamentally utilitarian. We may invest
time, effort, and resources in caring for them, but in return we expect to obtain tangible
material or economic benefits in the form of food, fiber, labor, or other practical services
that outweigh, or at least balance, the costs. But with pets, the balance of costs and
benefits appears, at least superficially, distorted. The average lifetime monetary costs of
keeping a pet dog in America have been estimated recently at anywhere from $17,500 to
$93,500 depending on the animal’s size, longevity, and use of expensive items such as
daycare, dog walkers, or veterinary care, while the average pet cat will set its owner back
by about $17,000 over his or her lifetime.15 Overall, Americans spend approximately $50
billion annually providing for their pets’ health and welfare, and yet it is sometimes
difficult to identify or measure any obvious quid pro quo.
It could be argued, of course, that people in wealthy, industrialized nations spend

abundant time and resources engaging in any number of activities that appear to convey
no obvious benefits other than personal enjoyment: watching movies or sporting events,
gambling in casinos, or buying and wearing designer-label clothing, to name just a few.
And it may be that keeping animals as pets is just another of these superficially pointless
things that humans do for fun when they can afford it. If that were the case, however, one
would predict that pet keeping would be absent or at least rare among less affluent
societies or groups that lack the resources to squander on luxuries. In reality, and as
previously outlined, human-pet attachments appear to be widespread, regardless of
whether our focus is on nonaffluent subsistence hunter-gatherers16 or homeless people
living impoverished lives on urban streets.17
This apparent lack of utility associated with pet keeping poses an interesting explanatory
challenge to evolutionary biologists and psychologists, since Darwin’s theory posits that
natural selection should only favor the maintenance and spread of human behavior that
contributes either directly to individual survival and reproductive success or to the
“fitness” of close genetic kin.18 In response to this challenge, a number of different ideas
have been proposed to account for the enduring popularity of the human-animal bond.
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Bonds or Bondage?
One obvious solution to the evolutionary problem posed by “the bond” is to argue that
pets are in fact simply living at their owners’ expense and that people derive no benefits
—and probably some harm—from engaging in these relationships. Proponents of this view
depict dogs, cats and other companion animals as social parasites that exploit the “hard-
wired” aspects of human parental behavior—such as our propensity to be protective and
nurturing toward infants—in order to obtain, as it were, a free ride. They also point to the
small size, neotenic or pedomorphic facial features, and infantilized behavior of many dog
breeds as evidence of selection for phenotypic traits that enhance these animals’ ability
to trigger human parental responses.19
While difficult to refute, the social parasitism hypothesis assumes that people who keep
pets must either be at an adaptive disadvantage compared with non-owners, or that the
fitness costs of keeping pets are relatively trivial compared with the potential risks of
being too discriminating with regard to potential objects of parental care.20 However, no
compelling evidence exists that people’s survival or lifetime reproductive success is
adversely affected by pet ownership, and the relative costs of keeping pets, at least for
some individuals, seem to be far from trivial. This suggests that either the theory is
wrong or that it needs to be modified. It may be more appropriate, for example, to
characterize pet keeping as a case of mutualism rather than parasitism: in other words,
as a relationship in which both partners derive mutual benefits from their association.
One example of a naturally occurring mutualistic relationship is that between various
coral reef fish and the diminutive cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus. Pairs of wrasse
stake out territories on coral reefs where they are visited by other fish for periodic
“cleaning”—that is, the removal of ectoparasites and dead tissue from their mouths and
gills. During the process, the larger fish, some of which are highly predatory, remain
passive and allow the wrasse to do their work unmolested.21 Human-pet relationships
may belong in a similar category. However, if this is the case, it is important to be clear
about the kinds of mutual benefits that are being exchanged. The advantages to the pets
may seem obvious, but we also need to ask what humans obtain from the company of pets
that might potentially offset the costs of caring for them.
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The Benefits of “the Bond”

In the late 1970s, the findings of a doctoral dissertation from the University of Maryland
triggered a sudden burst of scientific interest in the possible health benefits of the
human-animal bond. Briefly summarized, a study by Erika Friedmann used baseline and
follow-up interviews to investigate the influence of social and lifestyle factors on the
survival of 92 recent victims of heart attacks. With surprising foresight, Friedmann
included questions about pet ownership in her surveys and discovered that the pet
owners in her study were more likely to survive for one year after a heart attack than the
non-owners.22 While the impact of pets on survival was not huge, it was highly significant
statistically, and quite sufficient to stimulate a spate of subsequent studies that
attempted to understand the extent and overall significance of these effects.
Some of these studies focused specifically on the short-term influence of interactions with
pets on people’s physiological responses, including heart rate, blood pressure, and
circulating levels of hormones, such as cortisol and the so-called bonding hormone
oxytocin. The majority of these experiments have found that when people interact with
their pets, their levels of autonomic arousal tend to decrease to resting levels or slightly
below, and that circulating oxytocin levels tend to increase. Other studies that have
examined risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as serum triglycerides and
cholesterol, in large population samples have found significantly lower risks in pet
owners compared with non-owners.23 In prospective studies, the acquisition of a new pet
has been found to be associated with improvements in owners’ mental and physical
health, and with sustained reductions in their tendency to overreact to stressful
situations and stimuli.24 Pet owners also appear to be more resilient in the face of
stressful life events, resulting in fewer health problems and fewer visits to doctors for
treatment.25 Significantly, pet owners who report being very attached to their pets tend
to benefit more from pet ownership than those who are less attached, and dog owners
tend to do better than cat owners, perhaps because the attachment for dogs, on average,
seems to be stronger.26 Because of their need for regular exercise, dogs can also serve as
a stimulus for physical activity. Several studies have demonstrated higher levels of
walking and overall physical activity in dog owners compared with non-dog owners, and
some have found significant associations between dog walking and lower body weight
and reduced risks of diabetes, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and depression.27
Human-animal bonds may also benefit people indirectly by stimulating positive social
interactions and relationships with others. For instance, numerous experimental studies
have demonstrated that people of all ages, including those with physical disabilities,
enjoy more frequent and more positive interactions with strangers when accompanied in
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public by a dog than when unaccompanied.28 Community-based surveys have also

determined that pet ownership is positively associated with social interaction among
neighbors and with perceptions of neighborhood friendliness. After adjusting for
demographic factors, pet owners also tend to score higher on measures of “social capital”
and civic engagement than non-owners.29
Finally, as well as being good for individual pet owners, human-animal bonds may have a
positive economic impact on society as a whole. In one study that explored these effects,
a random, stratified sample of 1011 Australians was surveyed by telephone for
information about pet ownership and their use of healthcare services. It was found that
pet owners, on average, made 12 percent fewer doctor visits annually than non-owners.
Using an extrapolated estimate of the total number of Australian pet owners, and
“number of doctor visits” as a proxy for overall health system usage, the study’s author
calculated that pet ownership was associated with a potential saving of $988 million/year,
or 2.7 percent of Australia’s total national health expenditure.30 A later study by the same
author used similar data from two large, representative national surveys—the German
Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) and the Australian International Social Science Survey
(ISSS-A)—to calculate the hypothetical increase in healthcare expenditure if pet
ownership were to be abolished in both countries. In Germany, with relatively low rates
of pet ownership (37.7%) but high healthcare costs, the study projected a 2.56 percent
increase in doctor visits if pets were banned, resulting in a €5.59 billion increase in
national health expenditure. In Australia, with higher rates of pet ownership (64.3%) but
lower health costs, the equivalent analysis projected a 7.19 percent increase, equivalent
to a $3.86 billion increase in costs.31
Both studies were correlational and therefore unable to determine if the apparent
relationship between pet ownership and better health was a causal one. However, a
subsequent analysis used longitudinal data from the same two surveys to demonstrate
apparent causal relationships between pet ownership and improved health. In both
countries, the data consisted of self-reported pet ownership and self-reported health
(number of doctor visits in the preceding year) collected from the same individuals in
1996 and 2001, respectively. The results from Germany suggested that pet owners
averaged 7.5 percent fewer doctor visits in 2001 than non-owners, even if they had the
same standard of health in 1996. They also showed that people who “always” had a pet
(in both 1996 and 2001) made significantly fewer doctor visits than people who had
ceased to have a pet or had “never” had one during the same five-year period. When the
pet owning and non-owning samples from Germany were matched to adjust for
demographic differences, the pet owners averaged 24 percent fewer doctor visits
compared to the non-owners. The results from Australia, though less robust, indicated
that pet owners made 11 percent fewer doctor visits than non-owners, and confirmed that
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those who owned pets in both 1996 and 2001 were significantly healthier than those who
either ceased to own a pet during the period or never owned one.32
Further confirmation of a causal link between pet ownership and health savings comes
from a survey of 3031 younger women in China, where private ownership of dogs was
effectively banned until 1992, creating a unique natural experiment on the potential
health impact of the human-animal bond. The results indicated that the women who
acquired dogs after 1992 reported fewer doctor visits, took significantly more exercise,
considered themselves fitter and healthier, and slept better than the non-dog owners.
Furthermore, these health outcomes were positively correlated with dog owners’ self-
reported attachments to their dogs.33
“The Bond” as Therapeutic Intervention

The modern use of animals, particularly dogs, as therapeutic adjuncts in the treatment of
psychological and physical disabilities originated in the 1960s and 1970s with the
pioneering work of the American child psychotherapist, Boris Levinson. Levinson’s most
important contribution was to recognize that many of his more withdrawn and
uncommunicative patients became more relaxed and forthcoming whenever his own dog,
Jingles, was present during therapy. This led him to propose the use of companion
animals as “co-therapists” to help “break the ice” and build trust between clients and
their therapists.34
Samuel Corson and Elizabeth Corson, a husband and wife team of psychiatrists at Ohio
State University, were the first researchers to test Levinson’s ideas empirically. In the
1970s they set up what they called a “pet-facilitated psychotherapy” (PFP) program
within the psychiatric unit where they worked, and selected 47 withdrawn and
uncommunicative patients, most of whom had failed to respond favorably to more
conventional treatment methods. Each patient was then encouraged to help with the daily
care and exercise of a colony of laboratory dogs who lived adjacent to the hospital. At the
end of the study, the Corsons reported “some improvement” in all of the patients,
although they published details of only five subjects, all of whom had improved markedly.
Their assessment of the value of the PFP program was, however, unambiguously positive.
Animal-assisted interventions (AAIs), they argued, helped patients to develop self-respect,
independence, and self-confidence and transformed them from, “irresponsible, dependent
psychological invalids into self-respecting, responsible individuals.” As Levinson had
predicted, the dogs acted as social catalysts, forging positive links between the subject
and other patients and staff on the ward, and thus creating a “widening circle of warmth
Page 8 of 21
and approval.” The dogs were able to induce such changes, according to the Corsons, by
providing patients with a special kind of nonthreatening, nonjudgmental affection that
“helped to break the vicious cycle of loneliness, helplessness and social withdrawal.”35
The Corson study initiated a wave of research in Europe and North America during the
late seventies and eighties that sought to identify and quantify the benefits of AAIs across
a wide variety of patient groups and therapeutic settings. Regrettably, many of these
early studies suffered from a variety of design flaws. In 1984, a thorough review of the
available literature on AAIs found only six controlled experimental trials of the
therapeutic value of animals, all of which focused on adult or elderly populations. The
authors concluded that the studies showed that pets had either “no impact or produced
relatively small therapeutic gains.” They also noted that none of the studies revealed
dramatic therapeutic results similar to those noted in isolated case reports.36 Nineteen
years later, in 2003, a meta-analysis of 112 relevant studies was still able to identify only
nine (six involving control groups and three pre-/posttreatment designs) that reported
sufficient statistical information to enable the calculation of effect sizes. All nine studies
were published after to the original 1984 review and, as before, all were conducted with
adult and/or elderly populations. However, in contrast to the previous assessment that
these interventions had only minor therapeutic value, the meta-analysis found an average
effect size of 0.76, which would generally be considered large.37
A second meta-analysis of AAI research published in 2007 identified 49 studies that met
the eligibility requirements for this type of study. Four distinct outcome groups were
identified for analysis, involving: studies that applied AAIs to children with autism
spectrum disorders (ASDs); those that focused on medical outcomes, such as heart rate,
blood pressure, motor skills, or coordination; those that examined various emotional well-
being indicators, such as anxiety, depression, or fear; and those that looked for effects of
AAI on observable behaviors, such as aggression, violence, compliance with rules, or
verbal resistance. For the symptoms of ASDs, the analysis found treatment effect sizes in
the high range (Cohen’s d = 0.72), in the low to moderate range for various emotional
well-being indicators (d = 0.39), and in the moderate range for medical effects and
observable behaviors (d = 0.51). Use of dogs in AAIs was consistently associated with
moderately high effect sizes, compared with the effects of other therapy animals such as
horses, aquariums, and dolphins, but the nature of the presenting problem (e.g., medical,
behavioral, mental health) did not seem to influence outcomes. Also, in the four studies
that compared AAIs with other, more conventional treatments, effect sizes for AAIs were
either similar or superior to those of the other interventions.38
The possible mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of AAIs are the subject of
ongoing investigation, although the social-bonding hormone oxytocin has again been
implicated in the process.39 Future research will continue to refine our understanding of
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these mechanisms, as well as the particular ways in which they influence different
subject (patient) populations in different therapeutic contexts.
Human-Animal Bonds as Nonhuman Social Support

The apparent links between pet keeping and human health are consistent with the idea of
pets serving as sources of nonhuman social support.40 Social support is a theoretical
construct that expresses the degree to which individuals are socially embedded and have
a sense of belonging, obligation, and intimacy with others.41 A growing body of evidence
has confirmed a strong positive link between social support and enhanced health and
survival in humans.42 For example, social support factors have been shown to protect
against cardiovascular disease and stroke, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, nephritis,
pneumonia, and most forms of cancer, as well as depression, schizophrenia, and
suicide.43 The mechanisms underlying these effects are the subject of ongoing research,
but at least some of the benefits appear to arise from the phenomenon of social buffering:
that is, the capacity of supportive social relationships to buffer or ameliorate the
deleterious health consequences of psychosocial stress. It is well established that
prolonged psychosocial stress results in chronically elevated levels of circulating
glucocorticoid (stress) hormones, and that these in turn can have a damaging impact on
both the immune and cardiovascular systems.44 Again, some of these positive effects of
social support appear to be mediated by the neuropeptide hormones oxytocin and
argenine-vasopressin, which also play critical roles in the modulation of attachment
behavior and social bonding in mammals.45 Furthermore, the release of oxytocin
associated with pleasurable social interactions has a down-regulating effect on the
hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis that regulates the stress response.46
The mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of human-animal bonds may be similar
to those thought to be responsible for the social-buffering effect in human relationships.
At least four published studies have demonstrated significant increases in plasma
oxytocin levels in human subjects during and following interactions with their own (but
not with unfamiliar) dogs,47 and in one, both the owners’ and the dogs’ oxytocin levels
were positively correlated, and associated with the owners’ subjective assessments of the
quality of the relationship.48 Another study detected significantly elevated levels of
oxytocin metabolites in the urine of dog owners who received greater amounts of visual
attention (gaze) from their dogs in an experimental trial. When questioned, these owners
also professed stronger attachments to their more attentive dogs.49
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The social-buffering idea may also go some way toward explaining the relatively recent
and continuing explosion in the popularity of pets among industrialized nations in the last
40 to 50 years. In the United States, for instance, the results of a variety of social and
public-health surveys have documented the gradual collapse or fragmentation of
traditional social support systems, particularly since the 1960s. Such trends have been
marked by a substantial rise in the number of people living alone, especially in urban
areas; escalating divorce rates and an increase in the number of couples choosing to have
fewer children or none at all; people spending less and less time socializing with their
friends, or getting involved in their local communities; and families dispersing
geographically so that fewer close relatives now live within easy reach.50 It seems
plausible to argue in light of these trends that the rising popularity of human-animal
bonds at least partly reflects people’s attempts to augment their traditional support
systems using nonhuman animals.
Why humans should apparently be so dependent on the support of others to maintain

their health and well-being in the face of psychosocial stress remains an important
evolutionary question in itself. Recent field studies of nonhuman primates, such as
baboons (Papio ursinus), have demonstrated that females with stronger social bonds with
other females are longer lived, and their infants are more likely to survive to adulthood,
than those who lack such strong attachments. While such findings clearly imply that the
tendency among group-living primates to develop and maintain social support networks is
a product of natural selection, it raises serious questions regarding why this trait, which
effectively renders humans (and other social animals) vulnerable to the deleterious
effects of social isolation, evolved in the first place. Perhaps the survival and reproductive
advantages of being part of a supportive social network has selected for individuals who
experience psychological distress when social isolated and are therefore highly motivated
to seek out and maintain social attachments.51
Ethics and the Human-Animal Bond

Under ideal circumstances, people’s relationships with their pets are mutually sustaining
and beneficial. As with marriages, however, not all human-animal bonds are made in
heaven. Sometimes these relationships have a negative impact on society, the natural
environment, or the welfare of the animals involved. Dog bites, for instance, are a
significant public-health problem resulting in human injuries and occasional deaths.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4.5 million Americans
are bitten by dogs each year and, of those, approximately 885,000 require medical
attention.52 Children receive a disproportionate number of bites, and severe injuries
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occur much more frequently in those less than 10 years of age. The majority of bites are
inflicted by pets rather than strays, and in most cases the dog is known to the victim.53
Because dogs, cats, and other companion animal species are capable of transmitting
zoonotic diseases to humans, owners who fail to vaccinate their pets or treat them for
worms and other parasitic infections may also create a significant public-health risk.54
The very large numbers of pets who now coexist with humans can also have a damaging
impact on the environment. The depletion of wildlife resources to supply the exotic pet
trade, the impact of free-roaming cat predation on wild bird species, and the pollution of
parks and natural areas with animal waste are all obvious examples.55 Even supplying the
dietary needs of pets may impose a significant environmental burden. According to one
calculation, a medium-size family dog eats about 360 pounds of meat and 210 pounds of
cereal annually, while another estimate suggests that America’s 75 million pet dogs may
consume as many calories as roughly 35 million people. Producing this much food would
require the equivalent of approximately 20 thousand square miles of farmland.56
While species such as dogs and cats have undoubtedly benefited numerically from their
association with humans, many individual animals pay a significant price in terms of
compromised health and welfare. Failed human-animal bonds result in millions of pets
being abandoned, relinquished to shelters, and/or euthanized prematurely each year, and
many thousands are abused, neglected, or mistreated by their owners for various
reasons, ranging from ignorance to deliberate cruelty.57 Many purebred dog breeds are
afflicted with painful and debilitating health problems either due to inbreeding or line
breeding or selection for extreme standards of physical conformation.58 Commercial pet
“farming” is on the rise as the demand for some pets exceeds the supply, while the exotic
pet trade causes widespread suffering and death among wild animals during capture,
transport, and subsequent acquisition by owners with little knowledge of proper
husbandry and care.59 Even the most affectionate and caring human-animal bonds may
cause unnecessary animal suffering when, for example, an overly attached owner insists
on futile veterinary interventions to keep his or her terminally ill pet alive at all costs.60
All of these negative aspects of the human-animal bond raise important ethical
dimensions that need to be considered when weighing the benefits of our relations with
companion animals against the perceived costs.
Further Reading
Arluke, Arnold, and Clinton Sanders, Regarding Animals. Philadelphia, PA: Temple
University Press, 1996.
Page 12 of 21
Beetz, Julius A., Kurt Kotrschal, Dennis C. Turner, and Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg.
Attachment to Pets: An Integrative View of Human-Animal Relationships with
Implications for Therapeutic Practice. Göttingen and Cambridge, MA: Hogrefe, 2013.
Fine, A. H. Animal-Assisted Therapy: Theoretical Foundations and Guidelines for Practice.

New York: Academic Press, 2006.
Herzog, Harold. Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think
Straight about Animals. New York: Harper Collins, 2006.
Katcher, Aaron H., and Alan M. Beck. New Perspectives on Our Lives with Companion
Animals. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.
Manning, Aubrey, and James A. Serpell. Animals and Human Society: Changing
Perspectives. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
McCardle, Peggy, Sandra McCune, James A. Griffin and Valerie Malholmes. How Animals
Affect Us: Examining the Influence of Human-Animal Interaction on Child Development
and Human Health. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2011.
McCardle, Peggy, Sandra McCune, James A. Griffin, Layla Esposito, and Lisa Freund.
Animals in Our Lives: Human-Animal Interaction in Family, Community and Therapeutic
Settings. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing, 2011.
Podberscek, Anthony L., Elizabeth S. Paul, and James A. Serpell. Companion Animals and
Us: Exploring the Relationships between People and Pets. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000.
Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.
Rowan, Andrew N. Animals and People Sharing the World. Hanover, NH: University Press
of New England, 1988.
Wilson, Cindy C., and Dennis C. Turner. Companion Animals in Human Health. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998.
Notes:
(1) Hank Davis and Dianne Balfour, The Inevitable Bond: Examining Scientist-Animal
Interactions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Page 13 of 21
(2) James A. Serpell, In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human Animal Relationships
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
(3) “Surveys Yield Conflicting Trends in US Pet Ownership,” VIN News Service, accessed
September 14, 2014, http://news.vin.com/VINNews.aspx?articleId=31369.
(4) “Facts and Figures 2012,” FEDIAF (European Pet Food Federation), accessed June 19,
2014, http://www.fediaf.org/facts-figures/.
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James A. Serpell
James A. Serpell, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, PA
Page 21 of 21

The Human-Animal Bond, Serpell

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Subject: Political Science, Political Theory, Law, Law and

Abstract and Keywords

Historical and Cultural Perspectives

The Value of the Bond

It could be argued, of course, that people in wealthy, industrialized nations spend

The Benefits of “the Bond”

public by a dog than when unaccompanied.28 Community-based surveys have also

“The Bond” as Therapeutic Intervention

Human-Animal Bonds as Nonhuman Social Support

Why humans should apparently be so dependent on the support of others to maintain

Ethics and the Human-Animal Bond

Fine, A. H. Animal-Assisted Therapy: Theoretical Foundations and Guidelines for Practice.

(5) Lisa A. Maher, J. T. Stock, S. Finney, J. J. N. Heywood, et al., “A Unique Human-Fox

(13) James A. Serpell, “Historical and Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal

(18) William D. Hamilton, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour,” Journal of

(20) Serpell and Paul, “Pets in the Family,” 297–309.

(21) E. A. Herre, N. Knowlton, U. G. Mueller, and S. A. Rehner, “The Evolution of

(22) Erika Friedmann, A. H. Katcher, J. J. Lynch, and S. A. Thomas, “Animal Companions

(23) Karen M. Allen, J. Blascovich, J. Tomaka, and R. M. Kelsey, “Presence of Human

(27) Karen J. Coleman, D. E. Rosenberg, T. L. Conway, J. F. Sallis et al., “Physical Activity,

(28) N. Guéguen and S. Ciccotti, “Domestic Dogs as Facilitators in Social Interaction: An

(34) Boris M. Levinson, Pet-Oriented Child Psychotherapy (Springfield, IL: Charles C.

(37) K. R. LaJoie, “An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Using Animals in

(38) J. Nimer and B. Lundahl, “Animal-Assisted Therapy: A Meta-Analysis,” Anthrozoös 20

(39) Katherine A. Kruger and James A. Serpell, “Animal-Assisted Interventions in Mental

(42) J. S. House, K. R. Landis, and D. Umbersen, “Social Relationships and Health,”

Young, “Neuropeptide Regulation of Affiliative Behavior and Social Bonding in Animals,”

(43) Eriksen, “Role of Social Support,” 201–209; B. A. Esterling, J. K. Kiecolt-Glaser, J. C.

(44) R. L. Ader, N. Cohen, and D. Felen, “Psychoneuroimmunology: Interactions between

(46) M. Heinrichs, T. Baumgartner, C. Kirschbaum, U. Ehlert et al., “Social Support and

(47) Johannes Odendaal and R. Meintjes, “Neurophysiological Correlates of Affiliative

(48) Handlin et al., “Associations,” 215–228.

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