Positive or negative?

Dec 3, 2007 19:06 GMT  ·  By

1.Numerous studies showed that the love for your pets can improve your health. It decreases stress, the number of visits to the doctor's, and even increases the survival chances in case of heart attack. A pet can help stroke patients to recover and psychiatric patients to hold on their anxiety. Pets appease people, turning into the center of their attention and affection. Research proves that, at least in the case of mental health.

After a hard day, a pet can lighten up the room; that's why today's pets are important members of the family. Very short interactions with an animal that's not even a pet can drastically reduce a patient's anxiety and fear before a serious medical procedure. A first positive effect on mental health comes from the sense of responsibility; people have to care for a living being, becoming partners and keeping away feelings like loneliness.

Possessing a dog will bring you more social contact, as you have to get out of the house to walk the dog daily, which places you among other people (not to mention the beneficial effect a daily walk can have on your health, especially for sedentary people). Passion for pets is an easy conversation-starter that increases social contact. A research revealed that about 50% of the women said they'd allow anyone with a cute puppy to approach them.

After brief interactions with dogs, blood levels of the stress hormone cortisol (with negative long term effects) go down and many pets can really be affective. Even watching tropical fish in a tank releases relaxation hormones. Children with pets (especially dogs) have higher self-esteem, confidence and experience less fear. Children and adults encounter in a pet a non-judgmental confidant to share their concerns with. This is how Pet Assisted Therapy emerged, especially effective in case of metal disorders.

2.Not everything about pets is good. Just one example: 52% of the French households have at least one pet. But dogs and cats can transmit to their owners various diseases, like dermatomicoses (fungi determined skin infections), ascariasis (a disease caused by a parasite worm), scabies, leishmaniosis (caused by a protozoa), and toxoplasmosis (caused by Toxoplasma, a protozoa). The last one can cause spontaneous abortion and birth of deformed children. Pets can also cause various allergic reactions and infections caused by bites (mostly in the case of dogs).

In China it is forbidden by law to have more than one dog per household, to stop the spread of rabies. Bird pets too can transmit a nasty lung infection, psittacosis. And remember: pets' lifespan is shorter than ours, so one day you will lose your favorite pet anyway. Sometimes, animals can create trouble: noisy animals can cause problems with neighbors and cats can destroy furniture. Nocturnal animals will keep you awake all night long. And in case one family member dislikes an animal's presence inside the house, it's important not to take the responsibility of taking care of that pet, since that could increase resentment and stress.

3.Many people do not think it through when choosing a pet. If it's wild and exotic, cool!, it doesn't matter if those animals may be the last individuals of their population or species. After a stupid TV show presenting orangutans as ideal pets, in 1986 in Taiwan the fashion of raising young orangutans started. About 1,000 young animals entered the country (they were taken from their natural habitat, their mothers were killed, and remember that maybe more than 50% of them died before reaching Taiwan). Today there are no more than 20,000 orangutans in the wild!

But when they grew up, the owners were possessing huge beasts of up to 100 kg (222 pounds), the power of several people, aggressive and inscrutable. Owners abandoned them, and as orangutans are not sociable creatures, requiring integration in a group (like chimps and gorillas), they could have been sent to the wild. But these creatures had got human diseases, like hepatitis B and tuberculosis (that could decimate the wild populations), so many had to be killed or spend the rest of their lives in animal refuges.

You may have heard stories about alligators dumped into the sewers of New York, but the Burmese pythons invading Florida are for real. Pythons began to appear in the late '90s. Pet owners released their huge, unwanted snakes in and around Everglades and making the public understand the danger of this irresponsible action is still difficult.

Observations carried in Everglades showed that even alligators can not stop the pythons, and the snakes are even able to kill alligators. The giant snakes reach 26 feet (8.6 m) length and over 200 pounds (80 kg) in their native region in Southeast Asia. Once they pass 8-9 feet (2,5- 3m), they can kill a human being and the largest one can even swallow an adult!

Since 2000, over 1 million pythons have been imported by the United States for commercial sale. They're so darling when they're tiny. People enjoy watching a python killing something - like a rat, but within a year, pythons fed steadily grow over 6 to 8 feet (2-2,5 m). At this stage, nobody wants them and, unwilling to euthanize their beloved pets, many release the pythons into the wild, unaware of the ecological mayhem they provoke.

4.Sometimes the love for animals can do more harm than good. In many areas people use to feed wild birds with special bird food. In many cases, this food was found to be contaminated with Salmonella, parasites and various microbes. The germs can survive for days on the droppings from the soil or the trays employed for feeding the birds. Extremely dangerous for the birds are the moldy nuts.