Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Mammals like us

Three snippets about relationships with companion animals:

I used to have pet rats, Tanith and Trillian. Tanith was a small brown rat with white gloves. She was very friendly and affectionate. I taught her not to climb up my legs. She taught me to pick her up if she sat on my foot. Our training regimes dovetailed nicely and were equally effective.

I read something the other day that was saying that cats are different from other domestic animals in that they may have domesticated themselves. Looking for the source I found the story many places including this article from the NY Times, the origin was this paper in Science.

An animal psychologist once told me that dogs and people have much the same psychological problems, most of which are to do with socialising, but cats have very different ones most of which are to do with territory.

2 comments:

JK said...

I haven't followed the links yet, but I am jealous you had rats. I've always wanted to have a rat... MWH doesn't think it's a good idea. One of few flaws (so I know he's actually a human and not a robot) is that he doesn't really like a wide range of animals. He loves cats (excellent) but that's about it (sigh). I do think that someday, I'll be able to talk him into an African Grey (as long as one of our kids wants to inherit an African Grey).

RUTH said...

Not a Norwegian Blue?