A dog is a child’s best friend

Dogs are people’s best friends even before they can speak in full sentences or count.

Research has shown that young children, even under the age of two, instinctively want to help dogs.

From childhood, children form a bond with dogs, according to a new study.

The scientists recruited 97 children, aged 20 months to three years, and placed each child in a room with a dog in a play pen. As a result, it turned out that preschool children can be better brought up and kinder if they have a dog in their family. And students who spend more time with pets are better at learning empathy.

Researchers from the University of Western Australia and the Kids Institute telethon surveyed more than 1,600 families with children aged two to five.

The parents completed a questionnaire that assessed their children’s antisocial behavior, problems interacting with others, and “prosocial” behaviors such as kindness and sharing.

Children from families with dogs were 23% less likely to have difficulty with their emotions and social interactions.

The purpose of the experiment was to see if the children would give the dog an object, such as a toy or a treat, that was out of their reach.

When the dog clearly wanted the item, such as begging for it, looking back and forth at the item and the child, whining or scratching the play pen, the children gave the dog the item half the time—118 of 236 trials.

The results show that children are motivated to notice and understand the desires of dogs and help them, around the same age they begin to do this for other people.

Dr. Rahna Reddy, who led the research at Duke University: “Previous research has shown that children, even at very young ages, want to behave in ways that are beneficial. We’ve lived side by side with dogs for thousands of years, so we have a very special history with them that might help explain that.”

The study, published in the journal Human-Animal Interactions, used three friendly little dogs: Fiona, Henry, and Seymour.

Each child met with one of the dogs, accompanied by the researcher, while the parent pretended to be distracted by reading a magazine.

The researcher would then pretend they needed to leave or complete a work task on the computer, and discreetly tossed a dog treat or toy, such as a rubber bone, closer to the child and out of the reach of the dog, who could see the object. 44 kids who had dogs at home helped an animal that clearly wanted an item.

However, the authors caution that children who have dogs may simply feel more confident around them.

Also, the children were more interested in helping the dogs get food than toys.

Humans’ innate desire to better understand animals could help explain how our ancestors came up with the idea of ​​domesticating cows and chickens for farming or hunting dogs.

Christina DENISYUK.

A source dailymail.co.uk

Photo by Moskovskaya Pravda