what to do when your a human pet

Introduction

In the context of Wilson's Biophilia Hypothesis(1984), the human need and propensity to focus on and to chapter with animals ("Biophilia"), likewise as its counterpart (negative attitudes toward some animals, or "Biophobia"), have been depicted as biological tendencies (Wilson, 1984; Kellert, 1993a). As shown by a number of experimental studies, a general proneness toward animals and animal stimuli seems to emerge from early on babyhood onward (DeLoache et al., 2011; Lobue et al., 2013; Muszkat et al., 2015). Even in subjects with a deficit in the social domain (i.e., children with autism spectrum disorders) preference for animal features has been shown (Celani, 2002; Prothmann et al., 2009, but run across Grandgeorge et al., 2015), likewise every bit an increase in social behaviors in the presence of animals compared to toys (O'Haire et al., 2013).

KEY CONCEPT i. Biophilia hypothesis

The concept of Biophilia refers to a hypothetical human being affinity for the living world. Information technology tin can also refer to man trend to interact and form close association and emotional bond with the other forms of life in nature. Based on this theory, the Biophilia is considered to be innate and felt universally by humans.

Why animals constitute such an attractive stimulus for humans has non been completely clarified. Living beings engage the attention of people more than objects do, and it has been hypothesized that the evolutionary reason backside this response is that paying attending to other living beings is pregnant for private fettle (New et al., 2007; Mormann et al., 2011).

However, while enquiry efforts have been dedicated to empirically confirm human being "biophilic" (and/or "biophobic") predisposition and its emergence during development, very little attention has been paid to the identification of specific animate being attributes underpinning distinct behavioral responses in humans, specially in children.

In this review, nosotros volition commencement written report evidence of the result of some beast concrete traits on man perception of—and attitudes toward—different species. The specific role of animal facial cues as emotional and communicative signals regulating the human-creature bail volition be then emphasized. In particular, infantile facial traits will be highlighted as a class of stimuli with loftier biological relevance, chop-chop and unconsciously capturing attending and eliciting affectionate responses, including readiness to care and social engagement. In our contribution to the attempt of better understanding the mechanisms underlying human attraction to animals, we demonstrated an early emergence of the response to infantile facial traits and its generalization to companion (pet) animals (i.e., dogs and cats; Borgi et al., 2014). Here this evidence volition exist viewed also in the low-cal of recent findings showing the chief office of facial cues in regulating human-dog bond through oxytocin secretion (Nagasawa et al., 2015). To conclude, the affect of this information for homo health, as well as for brute welfare and management, will be briefly described.

[Animal] Beauty is in the Centre of the Beholder

The study of human attitudes toward animals is an extremely circuitous issue, involving a multitude of evolutionary, psychological, and cultural aspects (Serpell, 2004). However, even not because this variance, people'due south proneness toward, and consideration of, brute species greatly depend on some attributes intrinsic to the creature itself: both physical and behavioral characteristics of the various species largely influence man perception of animals and may explain why people like some animals, while disliking others (Serpell, 2004).

KEY CONCEPT 2. Attitude

An mental attitude can be defined as a feeling or opinion nigh a particular entity that is expressed by evaluating it with some degree of favor or aversion, as well every bit a mode of thinking, feeling, or behaving that reflects this disposition.

A substantial torso of literature on human attitudes and likeness of some species has shown that animals phylogenetically close to humans, and/or that are physically, behaviorally, or cognitively similar to them, tend to be preferred, evoke more positive touch on, as well equally higher business organization in terms of welfare and conservation (Plous, 1993; Gunnthorsdottir, 2001; Tisdell et al., 2006; Martín-López et al., 2007; Knight, 2008; Batt, 2009). Past contrast, humans evidence negative attitudes toward animals considered phylogenetically distant or dissimilar (due east.g., reptiles, fishes, invertebrates, Kellert, 1993b; Bjerke et al., 1998; Bjerke and Ostdahl, 2004; Prokop et al., 2010).

Borgi and Cirulli'southward analyses of kindergarten children's preferences for a wide range of different animal species are in line with the "similarity principle" (Tisdell et al., 2006) and suggest an early emergence of such a predisposition (Borgi and Cirulli, 2015; Effigy one).

Figure 1. (A) Examples of stimuli presented to children. From the elevation (left): vervet monkey, chicken, cat, spider, rattlesnake, sheep, mouse, panthera leo, eagle owl, turtle, monarch butterfly, and snail. Photos: Thinckstock/GettyImages. (B) Children'due south preference for unlike taxa (mean + SEM). A statistically significant difference between Mammals and Invertebrates and betwixt Birds and Invertebrates is shown (**p < 0.01). For further details encounter Borgi and Cirulli (2015).

Withal, similarity to humans, in particular phylogenetic closeness, is only one of the brute attributes explaining the enormous variance in people's attitudes toward animals (Serpell, 2004). Animal physical appearance, including aesthetic qualities (east.g., color; Stokes, 2007; Lišková and Frynta, 2013), was shown to exist a salient gene underlying human attitudes toward animals. Anthropomorphic features, large size and neotenous (juvenile) traits, represent the fauna attributes that accept been most consistently shown to touch homo preferences and attitudes (Serpell, 2004) and that contribute to preference's forming (Borgi and Cirulli, 2013).

Why do we similar Animals? Baby Schema and Cute Response

In the literature information technology is claimed that humans tend to adopt animals that they perceive as aesthetically highly-seasoned or "cute" (Gould, 1979; Forest, 2000; Gunnthorsdottir, 2001; Knight, 2008; Archer and Monton, 2011; Herzog, 2011b). Cuteness is often used as a measure indicative of bewitchery to a stimulus commonly associated with infancy and youth. The term was conceptualized in the Konrad Lorenz's notion of Kindchenschema (or infant schema) and first described by the ethologist as a set of facial features (i.e., large head and a round confront, a loftier and protruding forehead, large eyes, and a small nose and mouth) able to trigger an innate releasing machinery for caregiving and affective orientation toward infants (Lorenz, 1943). More recently, several empirical studies take shown that faces with these traits are normally perceived as beautiful and attractive and are consistently preferred to those with a less infantile facial configuration (Sanefuji et al., 2007; Glocker et al., 2009a; Lobmaier et al., 2010; Luo et al., 2011; Little, 2012).

KEY CONCEPT 3. Baby schema

The baby schema (Kindchenschema), equally proposed past ethologist Konrad Lorenz, is a set of infantile physical features perceived equally beautiful and motivates caretaking beliefs in other individuals, therefore providing the fundamental function of enhancing offspring survival.

The concept of cuteness non only encompasses the processing of specific morphological features, but besides involves a positive/appreciating behavioral response. Increased attention and willingness to care, positive affect and protective beliefs, every bit well equally decreased likelihood of aggression toward the babe, narrate the so-chosen baby schema response or cute response (Alley, 1983; Brosch et al., 2007; Sherman et al., 2009; Glocker et al., 2009a; Nittono et al., 2012). In species whose young completely depend on their caregivers for sustenance and protection, such response has a articulate adaptive value, contributing to enhance offspring chances of survival (Lorenz, 1943) and helping mothers to focus on newborns and modulating attachment (Sprengelmeyer et al., 2009).

The thought that the human response to infantile features is non restricted to conspecifics, only can also be elicited by heterospecifics was first proposed by Lorenz and was subsequently demonstrated by several empirical studies which have shown the generalization of the cute response to real animals (Sherman et al., 2009; Archer and Monton, 2011; Niggling, 2012; Golle et al., 2013; Lehmann et al., 2013), representations of animals such as cartoon characters (e.grand., Mickey Mouse, Gould, 1979) and stuffed/toy animals (e.g., Teddy bear, Hinde and Barden, 1985; Archer and Monton, 2011).

Analyses on the emergence of a cute response during development and its extension to the human-fauna context are scarce (Fullard and Reiling, 1976; Maestripieri and Pelka, 2002; Sanefuji et al., 2007). In a contempo study Borgi et al. (2014) have investigated the furnishings of the babe schema on children's perception of cuteness in human and brute faces, using both explicit (i.eastward., cuteness judgment) and implicit (i.eastward., gaze beliefs) measures. In this study, the effect of the baby schema on cuteness perception and attentional response was assessed in young children (3–six years old) using middle-tracking techniques and a controlled design in which stimuli (human, canis familiaris, and cat faces) were objectively quantified according to the infant schema content. Overall this study has shown that the response to an infantile facial configuration emerges early on during evolution. The manipulation of baby-similar traits affected both cuteness perception and gaze allocation to infantile stimuli and to specific facial features (i.e., the eyes), an effect non simply limited to human faces (Borgi et al., 2014; Figure 2).

Figure 2. (A) Examples of stimuli presented to participants. High infantile version (on the left) and low infantile version (on the correct) of dog, cat, and human faces. Photos: Thinkstock/Getty Images (modified). (B) Children's preferential looking. Viewing fourth dimension directed to loftier and low versions of images depicting adult and young faces (mean + SEM). Attentional bias for high infantile faces was axiomatic when children viewed developed images (*p < 0.05), while no difference was found when viewing images of young faces. (C) Cuteness ratings. Boilerplate cuteness ratings given to images of developed and young faces of three species (human, dog, and cat) (mean + SEM). Overall, faces of young individuals were rated equally cuter than those of adults (*p < 0.05). Some species-specific effects were besides shown (**p < 0.01). Adapted from Borgi et al. (2014).

Neural Systems Underlying Attraction to Babe Faces

Accumulating behavioral and neurophysiological studies support the thought of infantile faces as highly biologically relevant stimuli apace and unconsciously capturing attending and eliciting positive emotions (Brosch et al., 2007; Kringelbach et al., 2008; Caria et al., 2012; Senese et al., 2013; Borgi et al., 2014; Esposito et al., 2014). Adults' automatic emotional responses to infant stimuli appear to exist mediated predominantly by the autonomic nervous arrangement, independently of caregiving experience, or cultural exposure (Esposito et al., 2014). The evidence indicates an extensive neural circuitry involved in the perception of infant faces: enhanced activation has been found in encephalon areas involved in face up perception, attention, advantage and emotion processing, empathy, and motor control (for a review see Luo et al., 2015).

Overall, consistent behavioral and neurophysiological findings suggest that "the structural configuration of baby faces might act as a heightened attentional/emotional biasing mechanism" (Kringelbach et al., 2008). Moreover, the observed activation of specific brain circuits involved in preparation of voluntary action in response to baby faces (Caria et al., 2012), as well as the improved performance on fine motor dexterity tasks that required carefulness after viewing cute images (Nittono et al., 2012), were interpreted as reflecting a "readiness" to collaborate with babies, likewise equally training and intention to communicate.

Studies on non-parents indicate a generalized inclination to answer positively even to unfamiliar infant faces. In particular, the activation of reward circuits previously shown to mediate attachment and caregiving behaviors in parents toward their own children (i.e., dopamine-associated reward-processing areas, Swain et al., 2007) confirms the notion of baby faces as rewarding and salient stimuli trascending the biological relationships (Kringelbach et al., 2008; Caria et al., 2012).

The extent to which the brain circuits underlying essential adults' responsiveness to human infants also subserve a full general inclination to answer to baby animal stimuli is withal unclear. Some evidence exists indicating a species-specific adult encephalon response, i.eastward., a disposition to respond specifically to human children, instead of a more general inclination toward babe stimuli. In detail, in Caria et al. (2012) brain circuits involved in adults' preparation for communicative behavior with infants were activated preferentially by human babe faces, when compared to creature faces. A perception bias to conspecifics was also shown in another study (Brosch et al., 2007), that is an increase in spatial deployment of attentional resource in response to human infant faces compared to dog and cat faces.

Information technology should exist taken into account that nigh previous studies accept used facial stimuli not considerately quantified in term of baby schema content. Hence the interpretation of outcomes is express by the difficulty to dissociate the response to a specific stimulus (i.e., humans vs. animals; developed vs. young) from the response to its facial configuration (i.e., babe schema). By developing an constructive procedure to create stimuli with parametrically manipulated baby schema content—and that retained all the characteristic of the individual portrait—Glocker and colleagues have shown that images with more pronounced infant schema arm-twist stronger motivation for caregiving compared with low infant schema images (Glocker et al., 2009a), besides suggesting a neurophysiologic mechanism by which the babe schema could promote human nurturing behavior (Glocker et al., 2009b). Images with a higher baby schema content were shown to activate encephalon regions such every bit the nucleus accumbens, a primal construction of the mesocorticolimbic organisation involved in the apprehension of advantage, suggesting the office of infantile facial traits in providing a motivational drive to caretaking beliefs (Glocker et al., 2009b). By applying the same procedure to modify dog and true cat faces, Borgi et al. (2014) showed that the human attentional bias toward the baby schema may extend to animal facial configurations. This generalized pattern—and its extension across the mother-infant human relationship context—speaks to the efficacy of baby-similar appearances in eliciting alloparental care and may explain why we experience the urge to hold and care for anything that resembles a baby.

Pets every bit Baby Substitutes?

It is well known that some animals, such as the nearly mutual pet species (i.due east., dogs and cats), exhibit lifelong morphological and behavioral infantile characteristics. The retention of youthful traits into machismo (i.due east., neoteny) is considered a past-product of the domestication process (Belyaev, 1979; Frank and Frank, 1982; Hare et al., 2005), which may have operated through generations of conscious or unconscious selective breeding for non-aggressive behavior toward humans (i.e., tameness or docility, Belyaev, 1979). In comparison with their progenitors, domestic dogs are smaller in size, take shortened facial region and exhibit behaviors typical of immature wolves (e.g., barking, whining, soliciting attention) throughout their lifetime (Morey, 1994). Infantile characteristics have been peculiarly emphasized during homo selection of sure breeds for aesthetic reasons, often with negative consequences in terms of animal welfare (Serpell, 2002; Rex et al., 2012).

It has been hypothesized that both behavioral and physical infantile features nowadays in companion animals might form the basis of our allure to these animals and may bear some office of the responsibility for our motivational drive to pet-keeping and pet-caretaking (Archer, 1997).

We won't give here a full account of the variety of appreciable facts of animals treated similar human infants (eastward.g., toy or "purse" dogs dressed as babies), a reality which appears to be part of the more circuitous phenomenon known every bit anthropomorphism (i.eastward., the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to whatever other non-human entity in the environment, Urquiza-Haas and Kotrschal, 2015), and thus beyond the scope of this review. Instead, what is of particular interest, specially from a inquiry perspective, is the undeniable fact that the bond between owners and their companion animals shares remarkable similarities to the human relationship between human parents (typically the mother) and their children. These similarities have been described inside the framework of human zipper theory (Bowlby, 1969; Ainsworth and Bowlby, 1991), whose patterns of relationships may also be applied to the formation and maintenance of people'southward bail with their companion animals. Shared features of the 2 relationships include: dependency, proximity seeking, caregiving, and feelings of affection, which ultimately ensure security, comfort, protection, and survival to the child, also equally to the dog (Topál et al., 2005; Payne et al., 2015).

Fundamental CONCEPT 4. Attachment theory

Equally proposed by the psychiatrist John Bowlby, humans possess a primary motivational drive to course close affectional bonds. During childhood, a secure attachment to the caregiver (often just not necessarily the mother) provides a secure base from which an baby can explore the environment and on which he/she can form lasting, secure, and intimate bonds during adulthood.

The presence of a human existence can attenuate the effect of a stressful event in dogs (known as prophylactic haven effect, Gacsi et al., 2013) which appear to use the owner as a secure base for interacting with the environment (Horn et al., 2013). Moreover, previous studies have shown that the language used to talk to animals mimics the so-called motherese or baby talk (Burnham et al., 2002). Whether an association exists between the forcefulness of the relationship an owner feels to his/her dog and the canis familiaris's attachment profile to its possessor is still disputed (Siniscalchi et al., 2013).

Neurophysiological Correlates of the Human-Animal Bail

Notwithstanding human-pet relationships are considered an interspecific form of zipper, the growing body of enquiry on the neurophysiological basis of attachment and caregiving systems—and the interaction between them (Lenzi et al., 2015)—have almost completely neglected the analysis of the homo-pet bond. Only very recently Stoeckel et al. (2014) accept reported a comparison of fMRI-related encephalon activation patterns in women viewing facial images of their own kid and own dog. Results show regions implicated in emotion, reward, and affiliation, also as retentivity, visual/face processing, and social cognition, all showing increased activity when participants viewed either their own child or their own dog (Stoeckel et al., 2014). Nevertheless, images of their own child, but not of their own domestic dog, activated additional regions involved in reward function and known to have a critical function for human-human relationships of evolutionary importance (i.due east., romantic relationships and mother-baby bonding, Bartels and Zeki, 2004). By contrast, greater magnitude and extent of activation in regions cardinal to visual/confront processing and social noesis was elicited in response to ain dog images compared to own kid images (Stoeckel et al., 2014). This testify was interpreted past the authors equally reflecting the more central role of facial signals (i.e., facial expressions and gaze), in domestic dog-human interactions, compared to human being-human communication, mainly due to the absence of verbal linguistic communication.

Consequent with these considerations, the chief role of facial cues (namely the common gaze) every bit emotional and communicative signals during interactions between owners and their dogs was recently highlighted and interpreted equally regulating the human being-dog bond, similarly to what was observed in the developed-infant interaction context (Nagasawa et al., 2009, 2015). Mutual gaze in baby-caregiver dyads is considered an attachment beliefs (De Dreu et al., 2010) and a marker of social engagement, with its principal role in regulating social bonding, mainly through maternal oxytocin secretion (Farran and Kasari, 1990; Feldman et al., 2007; Nagasawa et al., 2012). Oxytocin is implicated in the neuroendocrine regulation of maternal behavior (Rilling and Young, 2014) and oxytocin signaling appears to exist critical in social bond germination (Hurlemann and Scheele, 2016; Numan and Young, 2016). In a contempo report based at Azabu University in Nihon, Miho Nagasawa and colleagues have shown an association between dog'south gaze and urinary oxytocin concentrations in their owners during affiliative interactions; the enhance in oxytocin facilitated owners' amalgamation toward their dogs with a consequent increment in oxytocin concentration also in the animal (Nagasawa et al., 2015). The failure to demonstrate such "interspecies oxytocin-mediated positive loop" in man-(mitt-raised)wolf dyads suggests the conquering of human-like communication modes during dog's domestication, mainly as a outcome of a option on systems mediating fearfulness and aggression toward humans (the then-called "emotional evolution," Hare and Tomasello, 2005; Nagasawa et al., 2015). The testify provided by the Nagasawa's squad not merely suggests that "dogs were domesticated by coopting social cognitive systems in humans that are involved in social attachment" (Nagasawa et al., 2015), but also shows how this acquisition may contribute to the establishment of a human-animate being bond that presents both behavioral and neurohormonal similarities with the mother-infant relationship.

Cardinal CONCEPT 5. Neuroendocrine regulation

The concept of neuroendocrine regulation comprises the part of hormones in regulating motivational states. Steroids and peptides, past influencing primal states, provide the motivational drive for sexual or parental behaviors, feeding, simply to name a few. This notion also encompasses the ability of physiological systems to respond to social and physical stimuli.

The "F-word": Pets as Friends

Scientific evidence reviewed so far points in the direction of a similarity betwixt human-pet and man-infant relationship and suggests the role of facial traits, namely the baby schema, in modulating the release of human care/"parental" behavior toward domesticated species (Lorenz, 1943). Sherman and Haidt's argument contradicts this notion and considers the baby schema response equally an emotional response "releasing" social behaviors, such as play and other affiliative interactions, and only indirectly leading to caregiving (Sherman and Haidt, 2011). In this context, authors rethink cuteness as non simply triggering care/parental beliefs, but more in full general every bit motivating social appointment. This vision would explain a variety of evidence on the existence of the baby schema response beyond the parent-infant relationship, east.grand., responsiveness toward non-kin children and animals, use of infantile traits in toys, cartoons, and robots (Sherman and Haidt, 2011). This would as well explicate the common tendency to anthropomorphize beautiful objects and animals, in this context proposed every bit a mechanism to reach social connection with them (sociality motivation, Serpell, 2002; Epley et al., 2008).

The farm fox experiment conducted in Siberia on silver foxes proved that selecting for a "friendly" beliefs can neotenize adult temperament and morphology, past altering the genes decision-making systems—such every bit the HPA axis—modulating both fear and aggression (Belyaev, 1979; Trut, 1999; Hare et al., 2005; Trut et al., 2009). Craniofacial proportions that we find attractive and (cute) in conspecific and animate being faces might therefore be considered as a sign of a friendly predisposition to collaborate and as genetically and hormonally linked to the development of social contact, trust and, ultimately, cooperation (Elia, 2013). As a matter of fact, baby-faced adults are considered more warm, likeable and friendly than less beautiful individuals (Zebrowitz and Montepare, 1982; McArthur and Apatow, 1983; Berry, 1991).

As in Elia (2013), "friendly" here refers to "calm, eager-to-interact individuals" and thus comprises the behavioral bases of friendship. The question is whether dogs, "man's best friends," and other pet species, could be actually considered as friends.

KEY CONCEPT 6. Friendship

The term friendship tin can be used interchangeably with the term social bond; yet, the first is oftentimes considered a hallmark of humans. Friendship tin be divers on the basis of the patterning and quality of interactions, that is, between friends the frequency and consistency of affiliative interactions is greater than between non-friends and lasts longer.

More than a decade has passed since the seminal work of J.B. Silk on friendships amidst not-man primates (Silk, 2002). In some bookish and not-academic contexts "Friendship" is still the F-word, a word that many would exist reluctant to utilise in reference to the beast earth or that "nosotros feel compelled to cloak it in italics, equally if this gives us some indemnity confronting charges of anthropomorphism or lack of rigor" (Silk, 2002). Notwithstanding, in our opinion "friendship" appears to exist the most suitable word to describe close man-pet relationships, which imply the formation of a social bond that serves analogous emotional and adaptive functions as human-human being friendships. Most of the properties that a relationship should have in guild to be characterized as friendship (Silk, 2002; Brent et al., 2014) are traceable in the human-pet association: intimacy, companionship, trust, loyalty, commitment, affection, acceptance, sympathy, business organization for the other's welfare, as well as fourth dimension spent together and maintenance of the pair bond after long separations.

Indeed, in that location is plenty of testify of a distinct role of companion animals in homo lives. Many owners live closely with their pets, sharing with them their domestic space and financial resources, view them as psychological-kin and equal members of the family unit (Serpell, 1996; Podrazik et al., 2000; Downey and Ellis, 2008; Topolski et al., 2013). Consistently, faces of human and canine "family" members (i.e., faces associated with long-term social familiarity) evoke like brain responses, particularly in the rostroventral anterior cingulate cortex, whose activity is considered to exist associated with cardinal aspects of social cognition closely related to amore and emotion (Shinozaki et al., 2007).

Impact and Future Directions

The literature reviewed and then far proves that attitudes toward animals, and the development of a bond with them, may, to some degree, depend on intrinsic attributes of the beast, including physical traits and aesthetic qualities. In the adjacent two sections some of the applicable aspects of this information will exist highlighted. First, man preference for animals with specific physical characteristics will be briefly discussed taking into account its implications for beast welfare and management (mainly in reference to kennel dogs). Then, the reported neuro-hormonal bases of the human-animal bond formation will be reviewed in the light of the mounting evidence that contact with animals may affect man health and wellbeing (Friedmann and Son, 2009; McCardle et al., 2011) and considering the widespread inclusion of animals in therapeutic and educational interventions (Cirulli et al., 2011; Drupe et al., 2013; Borgi et al., 2016).

The Beauty-Goodness Stereotype from the Animal Point of View

The beauty-goodness stereotype, i.e., the tendency to believe that "what is beautiful is skilful," is well known in social psychology (Dion et al., 1972). People tend to believe that a person'south beauty is positively related to his/her social and intellectual competence and general "goodness" (Eagly et al., 1991). Neotenous facial proportions, considered to be a component of (mainly female person) facial attractiveness (Jones et al., 1995), similarly influence interpersonal impressions. Individuals with babyish faces are perceived to have childlike personality and behavioral traits, namely to be less dominant and more warm, socially dependent, physically weak, and honest than their peers with mature faces (Zebrowitz and Montepare, 1982; McArthur and Apatow, 1983; Berry, 1991).

Except for a very contempo study in which dog cuteness was reported to influence strangers' ratings of dog'southward probable personality (namely the personality dimension of amicability, Thorn et al., 2015), the effect of the presence of infant facial features on social perception of animals has never been systematically examined. Are we victim of the beauty-goodness stereotype also when nosotros estimate animals?

The reported mix of attitudes toward dogs may stand for an allegorical case. In fact, fifty-fifty if in several reports dogs result to be ane of the most favorite species for both children and adults (due east.chiliad., Woods, 2000; Borgi and Cirulli, 2013, 2015), these animals are oft the recipient of fear-responses from people and thus of negative attitudes (Di Nardo et al., 1988; Doogan and Thomas, 1992; Borgi and Cirulli, 2015). Previous studies have reported that dog'south physical features (i.due east., size, glaze color and irises color, ear shape, upturn of the commissure), significantly affect human impressions and beliefs (e.g., preference, tendency to approach the animal or interact/play; Wells and Hepper, 1992; Blecker et al., 2013; Fratkin and Baker, 2013; Gazzano et al., 2013; Hecht and Horowitz, 2015). There is also testify that the difficulty with adoption for dogs kept in kennels may stem from their breed, size, age, and perceived bewitchery (Protopopova et al., 2012; Weiss et al., 2012; Svoboda and Hoffman, 2015), although farther research is needed to better understand the relative importance of different factors (i.e., animate being appearance and personality, cultural aspects and media influence) on dog adoption success.

In this context farther analyses on human perception of cuteness appear particularly relevant, especially considering that some popular dog breeds have not a infant-like appearance (east.g., long nosed dogs such as whippets). In a contempo study information technology has been proposed that, during domestication, dogs take evolved to manipulate the human preference for neotenous features past using the face. This study has shown that shelter dogs who exhibit facial expressions enhancing their infantile appearance (i.e., eye size and height; see also Hecht and Horowitz, 2015 for man preference for dogs with big eyes) are preferentially selected for adoption (Waller et al., 2013), a fact in line with human studies showing women's adoption preferences existence dependent on cuteness perception (Volk and Quinsey, 2002).

Cuteness judgments may heighten nurturing beliefs (Sherman et al., 2009; Glocker et al., 2009a) and modulate mother-infant interaction (Langlois et al., 1995). This field of assay has the potential to be successfully translated into the man-animal interaction research, in detail past exploring to what extent creature appearance influences human-pet interaction style and care behavior toward pets. In line with human research, preliminary evidence indicate dog cuteness (at least equally perceived by their owners) as i of the strongest predictor of owner-dog relationship quality, together with canis familiaris personality (a phenomenon called "Canine Cuteness Effect," Thorn et al., 2015).

It should be taken into account that most of the research conducted and so far has focused on dogs and cats (simply see Kruger, 2015). Very little is known on how animal advent influences human interactions and human relationship quality with other household animals, a knowledge of increasing interest considering the popularity of small animals (e.m., rabbits, guinea pigs, or "minipigs"), including not-mammalian species, as non-traditional pets.

Bond and Benefits: Animals and the "Extended Village Effect"

There is increasing evidence that the time we invest in meaningful personal relationships serves important biological functions: the quality and quantity of face up-to-face social interactions influence our allowed performance, how quickly we recover after an illness and, ultimately, how long nosotros live (House et al., 1988; McClintock et al., 2005; Steptoe et al., 2005; Kroenke et al., 2006; Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010; Cacioppo et al., 2011). It has been called the "Village Effect," a term which evokes a feeling of belonging to an intimate circle, "a tight circumvolve of people in whom you've invested serious time and affection over the years – and who accept returned that attention" (Pinker, 2014).

The question here is whether close relationships with companion animals may constitute meaningful relations as benign as those nosotros plant with human friends, relatives, and romantic partners. Numerous scientific reports accept shown that both long-term close relationships and short contacts with companion animals are associated with significant health effects in people, including reduced stress, lowered eye charge per unit, and blood pressure level (and thus lowered hazard of cardiovascular diseases; for a review see Friedmann and Son, 2009 and McCardle et al., 2011, but see Herzog, 2011a for methodological issues in existing studies). Companion animals, particularly dogs, may also indirectly benefit human being health past serving equally a catalyst for homo-man social relationships (i.e., from incidental social interaction and getting to know people, to the formation of new friendships, Wood et al., 2015), in this way enhancing socially supportive networks.

Starting from the evidence that oxytocin and human-fauna interaction furnishings largely overlap, information technology has been proposed that the activation of the oxytocin system plays a key function in the majority of the reported psychological and psychophysiological effects of human-animal interaction (Beetz et al., 2012). Coherently, direct reports of a release of oxytocin in humans in response to interaction with bonded pets are accumulating (Odendaal and Meintjes, 2003; Beetz et al., 2012), as well equally show of oxytocin'due south promotion of positive social behaviors in animals toward humans (Kis et al., 2014; Romero et al., 2014).

Considering the primary role of facial cues (specifically common gaze) equally regulating the human-dog bail mainly through oxytocin secretion (see above), a future challenge for research is to unravel the association between the strength of our attachment to pets and oxytocin-mediated health furnishings of man-pet interactions, and how this clan is facilitated by both behavioral and facial neoteny in our e'er-immature companion animals. Of particular involvement is the analysis of specific beast characteristics able to arm-twist emotional/affiliative responses in humans, especially because its potential application to the development of interventions for social isolated subjects (Cirulli et al., 2011; Berry et al., 2013; Borgi et al., 2016). Increasing research reports indeed point in the direction of an "Extended Village Effect," in which social connectivity with family unit and friends, besides as with our beloved animate being friends, appears to be the best way to promote occasions for social exchange, with consequent positive furnishings for health and well-being.

Conclusions

In this review we have highlighted the role of facial traits (i.due east., baby schema) and facial signals (i.e., optics gaze) equally influencing human perception of animals and regulating man bond with pet species, particularly dogs.

Different studies have shown that the preference for animals with item features (Borgi and Cirulli, 2013; Borgi et al., 2014), as well as negative attitude for some species (Borgi and Cirulli, 2015) sally very early on during development. In particular, children as immature as 3 years (thus far before the reproductive age) appear to exist attracted to—and to bear witness preferential visual attending for—faces retaining infantile features (Borgi et al., 2014). This and like evidence advise that the presence of both physical and behavioral neotenous traits in the virtually common pet species might bear some role of the responsibility for our allure to animals and motivational drive to take care of pets.

Compared to human-homo communication, in human being-animal interactions a more central role of facial signals tin be hypothesized, mainly due to the absenteeism of verbal linguistic communication. Future inquiry is thus needed to unravel both behavioral and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying human being-creature social interaction and to what extent facial traits and facial signals may facilitate interspecific bail germination.

Author Contributions

MB drafted the manuscript; FC revised it critically for important intellectual content.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or fiscal relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of involvement.

Acknowledgments

We thank Irene Cogliati-Dezza for her help during the reviewing process and for her technical support. We likewise acknowledge the bully contribution of Prof. Kerstin Meints in some of the ideas proposed in this manuscript. Some of the work cited in this review was funded past CompCog grant no. 06-RNP-020 (Evolution of Social Knowledge: Comparisons and integration beyond a wide range of human and non-human being animal species), European Scientific discipline Foundation (ESF), Substitution Visit Grant awarded to MB. We also thank Dr. Augusto Vitale for the interesting discussions on some of the subjects of this manuscript.

Author Biography

Marta Borgi received her PhD in Animal Behavior from the University of Florence, studying children's attitudes towards animals and man response to infantile features in pets, in collaboration with the Lincoln Babe Lab, Britain. She is conducting postdoctoral research at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Rome, Italian republic). Her enquiry focuses on the consequence of human-animal interactions on homo health, particularly in the context of brute-assisted therapeutic programs. She is likewise collaborating to a inquiry projection focusing on homo attitudes and values related to the use of animals in research.

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Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00298/full

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