>>9528517It's biological, we co-evolved with dogs and other domesticated animals as they went from wolves through the domestication process to becoming dogs. Not only did the dogs change their predisposition towards humans but we did so towards dogs as well.
There's experiments done on babies who have never seen dogs before, they show the baby a dog who is happy and wagging its tail, and the baby gets a little dopamine hit to indicate the dog is happy, they don't need to learn this it's innate behaviour. Where as chinese babies don't have this same response, probably because they didn't co-evolve with dogs the same way we did.
Any animal we've had a consistent co-evolution with we're bound to develop a natural empathy for, we do the same with cats as cats made fantastic mousers aboard ships where they killed rodents who carried disease from port to port. They also helped to protect grain stores on farms. You could lose entire grain silos if it became infested with rodents and so cats on farms developed a reciprocal lifestyle with the farm owners. Even large households in the city had mousers, No10 downing street where the Prime Minister lives still has a mouser to this day, with an official title.
As domesticated pets both cats and dogs have a lot of benefits, they relieve stress, lower blood pressure and act as companions for people who live alone or get lonely. They play with humans and so help socialize children as they grow up. They also tend to show empathy, so if you're feeling bad they'll comfort you as they're both social animals.
>>9528539for women, dogs have become surrogate babies, an extreme sign of pathology among the family unit.
