Human-dog relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic: booming dog adoption during social isolation
Human-dog relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic: booming dog adoption during social isolation
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DOI：
10.1057/s41599-020-00649-x
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发表时间：
2020-12-24
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Raz, Tal
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Morgan, Liat;Protopopova, Alexandra;Raz, Tal
最近的新冠肺炎疫情引发了不确定性以及对健康和经济的严重担忧。先前的研究表明，养一只狗或猫之类的伴侣动物对心理健康有好处。与动物的互动可能有助于抑郁和焦虑，特别是在容易受到压力的条件下。人与动物的互动甚至可能改善点对点的社会关系，以及增强人与人之间的尊重、信任和同理心。有趣的是，研究还表明，狗主人的压力和糟糕的幸福感也会对他们的同伴动物的幸福感产生负面影响。然而，由于新冠肺炎相关的健康、经济和社会压力，以及伴侣动物可能成为新冠肺炎携带者的非决定性报道，遗弃狗的人数可能会急剧增加。这种情况可能会导致高昂的成本和相当大的公共卫生风险。因此，我们假设新冠肺炎大流行和相关的社会孤立可能会导致人和狗的双向关系发生戏剧性变化。使用独特的前瞻性和回溯性数据集，我们的目标是调查在新冠肺炎大流行期间，人们在收养和遗弃狗方面是如何看待和行动的；并检查狗主人和他们的狗的福祉之间的双向关系。总体而言，根据我们的分析，随着大流行期间社会隔离变得更加严格，人们对收养狗的兴趣和领养率显著增加，而遗弃没有改变。此外，一个人的生活质量受损，与他们认为自己的狗的生活质量也同时下降，以及报告新的行为问题之间存在明显的联系。由于人和狗都是社会性动物，这些发现表明在新冠肺炎大流行期间人与狗的关系可能带来的好处，根据一个福利的方法，这意味着在人类和非人类动物的福利和健康之间存在双向联系。随着我们的气候继续变化，可能会发生更多的灾难，包括大流行，这突显了研究危机驱动的人与动物关系变化的重要性。
The recent COVID-19 pandemic led to uncertainty and severe health and economic concerns. Previous studies indicated that owning a companion animal, such as a dog or a cat, has benefits for good mental health. Interactions with animals may help with depression and anxiety, particularly under stress-prone conditions. Human-animal interactions may even improve peer-to-peer social relationships, as well as enhance feelings of respect, trust, and empathy between people. Interestingly, it has also been shown that stress and poor well-being of dog owners negatively affect the well-being of their companion animals. However, a dramatic increase in dog abandonment could potentially occur due to COVID-19 related health, economic and social stresses, as well as due to the inconclusive reports of companion animals being potential COVID-19 carriers. Such a scenario may lead to high costs and considerable public health risks. Accordingly, we hypothesized that the COVID-19 pandemic, and the related social isolation, might lead to dramatic changes in human-dog bidirectional relationships. Using unique prospective and retrospective datasets, our objectives were to investigate how people perceived and acted during the COVID-19 pandemic social isolation, in regards to dog adoption and abandonment; and to examine the bidirectional relationship between the well-being of dog owners and that of their dogs. Overall, according to our analysis, as the social isolation became more stringent during the pandemic, the interest in dog adoption and the adoption rate increased significantly, while abandonment did not change. Moreover, there was a clear association between an individual's impaired quality of life and their perceptions of a parallel deterioration in the quality of life of their dogs and reports of new behavioral problems. As humans and dogs are both social animals, these findings suggest potential benefits of the human-dog relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic, in accordance with the One Welfare approach that implies that there is a bidirectional connection between the welfare and health of humans and non-human animals. As our climate continues to change, more disasters including pandemics will likely occur, highlighting the importance of research into crisis-driven changes in human-animal relationships.