The Love of Dogs By Brian Simpson
The love of dogs could be genetic:
“Being a dog-lover is not a choice, it is in your DNA.This finding from a team of researchers in Sweden and England sheds some light on how man's best friend came to be and found being a dog owner is may be genetic.A study of twins found that getting a dog is influenced by an individual's genes and may even be inherited. It is impossible to say which genes are involved from the study but identical twins agreed far more than non-identical pairs on whether they would have a pet pooch.
Previous research found if we had a pet as a child we are more likely to like animals and own a pet in adulthood. But it was unclear if genetic differences between families contribute to this association. Lead author Professor Tove Fall, of Uppsala University, said: 'We were surprised to see that a person's genetic make-up appears to be a significant influence in whether they own a dog. 'As such, these findings have major implications in several different fields related to understanding dog-human interaction throughout history and in modern times.
'Although dogs and other pets are common household members across the globe, little is known how they impact our daily life and health. 'Perhaps some people have a higher innate propensity to care for a pet than others.'Researchers studied the heritability of dog ownership using information from 35,035 twin pairs from the Swedish Twin Registry. It compared the genetic make-up of twins to determine whether dog ownership has a heritable component.”
That raises the issue as well as whether or not other ethno-races might dislike dogs based on genetics. Or, could it be cultural reasons, since dogs are not the cleanest of animals, and can easily spread diseases to humans, especially parasites since human pet owners lose their heads around their pets and let them lick their faces, share foods with them and so on. Guess what part of their body dogs like to lick? I can therefore understand, that like pigs, there is a case against dogs.
There I said it, and I suppose I am going to get hate mail from dog lovers now. Give me an ultra-clean cat any day!
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