Purmorphamine cost The fact that social capital was higher a

The fact that social capital was higher among not only dog owners may have a number of alternative explanations that merit further exploration. One Purmorphamine cost is that pets (of any kind) may be linked to perceptions of trust, a central tenant of social capital. Some observational studies have found that the presence of a companion animal enhances perceptions of the trustworthiness of other people (Guéguen & Ciccotti, 2008; Schneider & Harley, 2006). Other experimental evidence suggests that oxytocin may enhance people’s trust of others (Zak, Kurzban, & Matzner, 2005), and this could tie in to other research indicating that dog owner’s oxytocin levels are boosted when they interact with their pet dogs, through mutual gaze (Nagasawa, Kikusui, Onaka, & Ohta, 2009) or kissing (Handlin, Nilsson, Ejdebäck, Hydbring-Sandberg, & Uvnäs-Moberg, 2012). We might hypothesise that pet-owners experience a rise in oxytocin regardless of the type of pet (i.e. that cat owners might benefit as much from a boost in oxytocin as dog owners) and that this may contribute to enhanced feelings of trust and higher levels of social capital observed among all pet owners. Pets of many types can also break down social inhibitions towards strangers, and as articulated by Newby, “the presence of a pet seems to ‘normalise’ social situations, getting everyone through the ice-breaker stage to the point where they can risk directly engaging with the unfamiliar person” (Newby, 1997 p. 180). That social capital was associated with pet ownership across all four cities (one in Australia and three in the US), and in data collected nearly a decade after our first study associating pets and social capital (Wood, 2005) confirms that the original findings were not an artefact of a single locality at a particular point in time. Our findings here are also timely, with growing calls in the literature for the influence of pets in society to be taken more seriously than it has been in the past. Brook’s recent paper on the benefits for people with mental illness is one example of this, finding that pets could fulfil a unique role in individuals’ networks of support, and have demonstrable benefits for people with poor mental health (Brooks, Rushton, Walker, Lovell, & Rogers, 2016). What then are the policy and practice implications of our findings? Our results support firstly the merits of ‘pet-friendly’ cities. Whilst there is no ‘one size fits all’ model of a pet friendly city, and cultural mores and local laws and policies need to be taken into account; housing and accommodation pets for those who wish to own a pet is an important starting point. In Australia for example, pets have traditionally been more likely owned by people living in detached housing with backyards, with many apartment complexes and retirement villages still defaulting to a ‘no pets’ policy (PIAS, 2010; Wood, 2009). By contrast, there are cities in Europe and the U.S. with a longer history of higher density apartment style living where pets are more readily accepted in residences of this type (PIAS, 2010), or there is greater leniency around pets in rental properties (Zimalag & Krupa, 2009). Given aging populations, housing affordability and the need to curb urban sprawl are critical social trends common to many countries (including the US and Australia), notions of who can own a pet and where they can live needs to keep abreast of the times. The walkability of communities and the presence of parks and open space is also an important consideration if our towns and cities are to be pet friendly. Whilst our results showed that social capital can be precipitated by owning pets other than dogs, canines are nonetheless the most common type of pet, and dog walking in mainstream parks and public open spaces (with the proviso of picking up after one’s dog) has been shown to precipitate social interactions that are not limited only to dog owners (Wood et al. 2008). Seeing people in the community walking their dogs, and socially interacting with others as a by-product of this, may also have a halo effect, whereby overall perceptions of sense of community are enhanced (Wood, Giles-Corti, Bulsara, & Bosch, 2007).