Why do humans have the urge to pet animals?
In: Biology
They’re cute, we want to interact with things we find appealing so we pet them. If you’re asking why specifically we pet them rather than anything else it’s just something that has become accepted that pets like
In the time of early humanity, imagine a pack of humans comes across a pack of wolves. They are either going to have to fight eachother for food and shelter, or work together.
At first these groups would have fought, but working together means better chances of survival for everyone, so over time both groups evolved until they were forming packs of dogs and humans that always worked together.
Your desire to pet a cute animal is part of that pack mentality. It’s an instinct to look out for eachother.
This is specifically about dogs, but you can imagine a similar idea with any farm/work animal.
I think this is why people are less inclined to pet a spider or lizard, because we don’t really work with them so well.
This concept is explained brilliantly in Niel Dergrasse Tysons show ‘Cosmos’. The start of the episode ‘Some of the things that molecules do’ is all about this. It’s on Disney+
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