That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites-Pets

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

In today's Neuroscience Bite, we discuss the neuroscience behind our relationships with our pets. 

Hi, my name is Olaf Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another Neuroscience Bite. So this comes from you, the listeners. There's been a lot of people asking about the neuroscience of pets. And to be fair, I wasn't sure if people were curious about what's going on in your pet's brain. And I could take a stab at that, but I'm not much of an animal neuroscientist. Or if it was more about our relationship with pets.

So I thought I'd take a minute or two and talk about the neuroscience of pets. So I thought I'd take a minute or two and talk about the neuroscience of pets. But from the human perspective, you could probably guess the simplicity of this, if you will. Basically, our pets are, we treat them not quite like people, but they're obviously significant others. So when you see your pet, you have a response in the amygdala, an emotional response. And because you build an attachment to the pet, just as you would build an attachment to a close significant other, you know, if you're lonely or you're sad, that comforting you feel is the response of being around someone that, or something that evokes an emotional response. It's natural.

Just, you know, to this day, if my mother holds me, I still get a warm and fuzzy because she's my mom. Well, the same is true of a pet. So the neuroscience behind pets is really pretty simple. We treat them as significant others, all right? You can talk to them and, you know and they can understand language to some extent. Obviously, the animal brain is considerably smaller than the human brain, at least in terms of the cognitive side of things.

But your pets can learn basic stimulus response things. I know that some of you think that they're quite intelligent, and they can appear to be that way, but the reality of it is that the average animal brain is considerably smaller than the human brain, which literally limits their capacity for what we would call cognitive thought. If you think back to the episodes that we've done on how the brain works. Really, the reason your brain can arrive at all the complex thought processes that it can is because there's 86 billion neurons and a couple trillion interconnections. Because of that complexity of structure, we have complex thought. Animal brains are considerably smaller. And I guess maybe I will do an episode on animal

brains just to highlight the differences. But in terms of the neuroscience of pets per se, it's really that straightforward. It's just another significant other in your life. So your amygdala responds when you see your pet, when you hug your pet, when you have fun with your pet. And when your pet snuggles up against you, you get that comforting sensation for the same reason. Anyway, that's just a quick neuroscience bite on the neuroscience of pets. Remember, check out the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com, links to Patreon and Etsy. If you have other ideas for bites or episodes, you can follow me on Twitter at thatneuroscienceguy and DM me or email us, thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com.

Anyways, that's another neuroscience bite. My name is Olive Krigolson, and I'm that neuroscience guy. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.