Poll: Who Would You Rather Choose- Pet or Spouse?
Serious question here: if you had to choose between your spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend and your pet, who would you choose? We have a poll for you at the bottom of our article, but we’ll show you with other people answered in a similar poll.
According to NPR, of the 1,000 people who participated in a national survey conducted by the Associated Press and Petside.com:
— 84 percent said they would stick with their spouse or significant other.
— 14 percent chose the pet.
— 1 percent said they didn’t know.
— 1 percent wouldn’t answer (perhaps someone was listening?)
Crazy, right? Well, it’s not really a shocker to animal lovers.
In fact, most animal lovers probably let their pet sleep with them in the bed. But another study has found shocking information, this time detrimental to the pet lover’s health.
They’re not talking the common cold or a mild stomach virus, either. A 9-year-old developed the plague after sleeping with his flea-infested cat. A 60-year-old woman contracted meningitis after repeatedly kissing the family dog. Animals are notorious for carrying parasites and fleas that can make their owner vulnerable for other diseases they wouldn’t normally be exposed to through human-to-human contact.
According to MSNBC:
Sleeping with and “kissing” your animals on their little pet lips puts you at risk for some serious medical problems — even when those pusses and pooches are seemingly healthy, according to “Zoonoses in the Bedroom,” a study published in the February issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
“The risk of contracting something is rare, but if you’re that person who gets a disease from a pet, rare doesn’t matter that much,” says the paper’s co-author Bruno Chomel, a professor at the University of California-Davis school of veterinary medicine and an expert in zoonoses, the transmission of disease from animal to human. “I know this will make me unpopular, but pets really don’t belong in your bed.”
At greatest risk are the young, elderly, and those whose immune systems are compromised, such as transplant patients, diabetics and people who are HIV-positive.
Picking up a disease from the family pet is indeed rare, as the paper shows. But there are issues that you should know. Approximately 60 percent of all human pathogens could have been transmitted by an animal, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And more than 100 of the 250 zoonotic diseases identified come from domesticated pets, says Chomel.
So, if you had to choose between your spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend and your pet, who would you choose? Vote below!
