I think a better question would be What is a Good Pet to Have because the response would be vast. Naturally Man’s best friend would be at the top of the list and we all understand why but Consider this;
- If a dog loves you, so what? You’re human, that’s what dogs do. A domestic family dog if locked within a home would likely starve to death or eat to death in the absence of its owner.
- If a cat loves you it’s something special. However, in early 2000’s a study was conducted in Italy based on the common occurrence of forgotten or lost historic locations being rediscovered as the result of common domesticated house cats. A large number of family cats were chipped and had small camera devices attached to their collars to see what might be revealed. Much to the chagrin of the majority of these cat’s owners it was discovered that most of these common indoor/outdoor cats had up to five separate family households within a three mile radius that claimed them, named them, had special cat doors and personalized food dishes and so on and so forth…
- Exotic pets come to mind along with the dangers and disasters associated with them; big cats suddenly and without warning turn on the masters after 20 years of faithful bonding, large exotic snakes that get released after growing to large to safely maintain (pythons in the everglades growing large enough to take on gators and caymen,) the feral cats (invasive) to Austrailia and you get the idea…
And who hasn’t felt the loss and grief of a beloved family pet that lived to a ripe old age that broke the hearts of Little Timmy and Little Lilly when it had to but down because it had grown to old to find the food bowl, or whatever…
I submit my vote for best pet would be the Chinese Box Turtle, the generational family pet. While not overtly affectionate like dogs and cats they are observed to recognize their owners and demonstrate unique personal traits varying between each speciem and the average life span is 50 years and this is not the exception, it’s the standard. However there are cases of these turtles leaving upto 150 years and in some highly unique exceptions they lived over 200 hundred years.