Pet dogs are like surrogate children for their owners.
Dogs are like surrogate children for their owners
A leading anthropologist has claimed that the bond humans share with their pooches is as close as that between a parent and a child.
Dogs and humans are the only two species so far proved to feel love for one another and Dr. Anna Machin referred to a Harvard study in 2014, which showed how mothers' brains lit up in a similar way when looking at pictures of both their children and their dogs.
Dr. Machin, from the University of Oxford, said at the Cheltenham Science Festival: "When we look at the brains of humans with their dogs, we see the fingerprint of love and we also see the parenting areas of the brain light up.
"I think the evidence is showing more and more with dogs that the relationship they have with their humans is, by any definition, a loving relationship."