# When did people first start keeping pets? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 13, 2010, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546 "2010-09-13T00:23:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/21 "2010-09-13T21:21:28Z")
I have a hard time believing that keeping animals as pets didn’t predate domestication. Kids absolutely love catching critters of all sorts. At a certain hunger level, lizards look like food… but if you’ve had a good meal, a lizard leashed on a blade of grass is a hell of a lot of fun. Frogs, snakes, butterflies… they’re all good for entertainment. Catching these things is a way to practice hunting skills and caring for them is good practice for parenting skills. Plus, you can eat them when you need a snack. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/22 "2010-09-13T21:55:32Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > The idea of an indoor pet that you fuss over constantly seems pretty recent. Perhaps since the 1940’s or 50’s. According to the [Wikipedia article on poodles](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_poodle#Poodle_sizes), toy poodles have been kept since the 18th Century. What you describe is still a pretty common, utilitarian view of animals (even “pets”) among farmers in the U.S. I think it’s pretty clear that pets (as defined by the idea of an animal which serves little or no functional purpose, other than as a companion) have been kept by the wealthy / upper class for quite some time. With the emergence of a middle class in western society, you now had another, far larger, group who had enough disposable income that they could afford to spend money on a pure companion animal. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/23 "2010-09-13T21:58:37Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > The idea of an indoor pet that you fuss over constantly seems pretty recent. Perhaps since the 1940’s or 50’s. We have plenty of literature establishing very clearly that people had indooor pets at least 3, 000 years ago, everyhting from cats and dogs through birds and fish to leopards. Even in the US, we have literature about spoiled lap dogs going back at least as far as Mark Twain, and that’s only the stuff I know of. Given the cultural influence of France in the 18th century and the fondness of French aristocrats for lap dogs, I imagine that indoor pets go back at least 250 years in the US. Anybody suggesting 1940 as the earliest date for indoor pets is way, way off the mark. ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/24 "2010-09-13T21:59:43Z")
People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/25 "2010-09-13T22:07:55Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > According to the [Wikipedia article on poodles](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_poodle#Poodle_sizes), toy poodles have been kept since the 18th Century. Toy poodles are a very, very recent lapdog breeed, in fact they are probably the newest of the lapdogs. Even something like the King Charles predates toy poodles by 150 years, and we have excellent records showing that the King Charles itself was bred from existing lap dogs that had been bred for generations. Then we have the various oriental lap dogs that have written histories going back 500 years, and credible written legends indictaing at least 1, 500 years. So just in terms of records that state explictely “these dogs were kept inside and pampered and had absolutely no use aside from companionship” we can date pets to at least 500 years back. If we include Babylonian and Egyptian records about people keping “fishes in bowls for their delight” and similar we can push that back over 2, 000 years. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/26 "2010-09-13T22:12:56Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > > [@aceplace57](#): > > > > The idea of an indoor pet that you fuss over constantly seems pretty recent. Perhaps since the 1940’s or 50’s. > > We have plenty of literature establishing very clearly that people had indooor pets at least 3, 000 years ago, everyhting from cats and dogs through birds and fish to leopards. Even in the US, we have literature about spoiled lap dogs going back at least as far as Mark Twain, and that’s only the stuff I know of. Given the cultural influence of France in the 18th century and the fondness of French aristocrats for lap dogs, I imagine that indoor pets go back at least 250 years in the US. > > Anybody suggesting 1940 as the earliest date for indoor pets is way, way off the mark. I think **aceplace** made the mistake of not indicated he/she was talking about regular, everyday folk. But I’d still push that back further than then 1940s. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/27 "2010-09-13T22:18:28Z")
1940’s was my own family history. All my older family were farmers. Dogs rode in your pickup or hung around in the barns. They were dirty, smelly, with fleas and ticks. The idea of bringing one into the house was unheard of. Later generations left the farm and lived in the city. Indoor pets came with the city house. 😉 Heavy City traffic made fences for dogs a necessity. I’d agree the rich and upper class had pets long ago. Wasn’t it the Chinese Emperors that had pekineses dogs? > [@Blake](#): > > > [@aceplace57](#): > > > > The idea of an indoor pet that you fuss over constantly seems pretty recent. Perhaps since the 1940’s or 50’s. > > We have plenty of literature establishing very clearly that people had indooor pets at least 3, 000 years ago, everyhting from cats and dogs through birds and fish to leopards. Even in the US, we have literature about spoiled lap dogs going back at least as far as Mark Twain, and that’s only the stuff I know of. Given the cultural influence of France in the 18th century and the fondness of French aristocrats for lap dogs, I imagine that indoor pets go back at least 250 years in the US. > > Anybody suggesting 1940 as the earliest date for indoor pets is way, way off the mark. ---
**Author:** ![VernWinterbottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c67d28/32.png) [@VernWinterbottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VernWinterbottom)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/28 "2010-09-14T14:53:36Z")
Just a guess, but I think it’s more likely that cats and dogs chose to hang around near humans than the other way around. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/29 "2010-09-14T15:00:06Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > … > Og invent pet rock before Gronk get baby animal. Og still wait for resolution in trademark infringement suit. Og need better lawyer. Gronk spoil that kid. And Gronkling too. Hire [this guy](http://30.media.tumblr.com/ahLApMt1Vpo4wrff1XoNkvoto1_400.jpg). ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/30 "2010-09-14T15:06:19Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > WAG here. Personal family experience. Some of my older relatives I knew as a child had a much different attitude about pets. > > My uncle (born 1910) liked dogs, but only outside. He never really spent much time petting or playing with them. He’d put food out. Give it a couple pets on the head and get to work on the farm. He didn’t worry about fencing the dog in. The dog came and went as it pleased. It always hung around because it got fed. He never took a dog to a vet. I remember him splinting a neighbors dog’s leg that got hit by a car. It recovered. If a dog got sick, he’d pick up something that might help at the Farmers CoOp Feed store. > > My other older relatives were the same way. Dogs and cats belonged outside. > [@aceplace57](#): > > 1940’s was my own family history. All my older family were farmers. Dogs rode in your pickup or hung around in the barns. They were dirty, smelly, with fleas and ticks. The idea of bringing one into the house was unheard of. > > Later generations left the farm and lived in the city. Indoor pets came with the city house. I think this says more about the _farmers_ in question than it does about the practice of keeping pets generally. It’s a hardness of attitude and a utilitarian outlook mostly. Hell, American farmers could substitute “migrant Mexican farm workers” for “dogs” in any of the sentences above and it would reflect their attitudes equally well. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/31 "2010-09-14T15:22:34Z")
I think **Elendil’s Heir** has the right answer. It’s what I was coming in to say. I suspect that both cats and humans and dogs and humans are really symbiotic – cats and dogs figured out that they could get food living among people because they could trap vermin (mice mainly, but if you have cats you know that they chase and eat a _lot_ of insects) and scarf up any random people food as well, plus getting shelter. People kept them around because they’d eat the mice that were stealing food. Dogs did the same things, plus they could help with hunting. I’ve read speculation that the Greeks originally kept snakes in houses to keep down vermin as well (which explains a lot of the carvings of snakes, and the absence of cats as domestic animals in early Greek works – although they show up by Aesop’s time). All of that isn’t “pets” in the sense of “useless animals kept as creatures of affection”, but it’s probably how pets started out. I don’t count domesicated “farm” animals like cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, or horses. I suspect the first pets kept as points of affection that were pretty pointless, from a utilitarian point of view, were **monkeys**. They’re not useful for hunting, for keeping down vermin, or for transportation. and they ain’t good eatin’. If anything, they make things worse – eating your food, sharing lice and fleas, defecating and urinating in inconvenient places (one big advantage of dogs and cats is that you can train them in this regard), and possibly being a hazard to family members (I’ve heard and read scary stories of monkey attacks). I know that the Romans kept monkeys – there are Pompeii wall paintings of them – although that’s pretty late. I think there may be Egyptian representations of pet monkeys . I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if monkeys were kept as pets in the earliest cities. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/32 "2010-09-14T15:36:38Z")
Do parrots serve a purpose for pirates? Does insulting the rest of the crew and acting cliche count as utilitarian? ---
**Author:** ![kimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f0a364/32.png) [@kimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kimera)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/33 "2010-09-14T20:55:38Z")
> [@StusBlues](#): > > People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets. You joke, but they were. Wealthy [Romans](http://www.societasviaromana.net/Collegium_VitaQuotidiana/pets.php) and [Egyptians](http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/ethnoarchaeology/ethnozoology/epets.html) both owned pets as status symbols. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/34 "2010-09-14T21:39:28Z")
> [@kimera](#): > > > [@StusBlues](#): > > > > People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets. > > You joke, but they were. Wealthy [Romans](http://www.societasviaromana.net/Collegium_VitaQuotidiana/pets.php) and [Egyptians](http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/ethnoarchaeology/ethnozoology/epets.html) both owned pets as status symbols. Interesting freudian slip. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/35 "2010-09-14T22:32:41Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > Do parrots serve a purpose for pirates? > > Does insulting the rest of the crew and acting cliche count as utilitarian? Pirates and other sailors didn’t actually keep parrots as pets. They were more like trade goods. Sailors would buy exotic animals like parrots or monkeys in the tropics and then resell them for several times what they paid for them in European ports. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/36 "2010-09-15T03:39:29Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > > [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > > > Do parrots serve a purpose for pirates? > > > > Does insulting the rest of the crew and acting cliche count as utilitarian? > > Pirates and other sailors didn’t actually keep parrots as pets. They were more like trade goods. Sailors would buy exotic animals like parrots or monkeys in the tropics and then resell them for several times what they paid for them in European ports. Damn pirates, always so practical. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/37 "2010-09-15T04:36:32Z")
Don’t ever buy a [parrot](http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~ebarnes/python/dead-parrot.htm). ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546/38 "2010-09-15T08:36:52Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > I think this says more about the _farmers_ in question than it does about the practice of keeping pets generally. It’s a hardness of attitude and a utilitarian outlook mostly. > > Hell, American farmers could substitute “migrant Mexican farm workers” for “dogs” in any of the sentences above and it would reflect their attitudes equally well. The attitude of farmers (relatives or neighbours) re dogs in the (admitedly backward) rural area I was raised up in the 70’s in France was basically the same (although some would let them inside sometimes) and the care/attention pretty minimal. So I assume it has been the attitude of farmers in general, not of some farmers in particular, and most probably for quite a long time in the past (I doubt that a 17th century farmer was kinder with his dogs than a 20th century one). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-people-first-start-keeping-pets/553546.md?page=1)