Abstract
This study aimed to determine if there has been an increase of global interest on pet adoption immediately after the WHO declaration of the pandemic and if the effect has been sustainable in 8 months on. We conducted a Google Trends search using keywords related to pet adoption. Relative search volume (RSV) was scored between 0 and 100 for the lowest and the highest, respectively. Top countries contributing to the dataset included Australia, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia. From 2015 through 2020, the worldwide RSV for the categories of pet, dog and cat adoption peaked between April and May 2020, the early epidemic phase of the pandemic. These were significantly higher than the 5-year worldwide average RSV for all three categories (P = 0.001). Comparing to the same period in 2019, the RSV ratio (2020/2019) for both dog and cat adoption increased by up to 250%. Nonetheless, the RSV for dog adoption has been decreasing since July 2020 and returned to the 5-year average by December 2020. In contrast, the interest in cat adoption remained sustainably high, possibly reflecting the feline acclimation to indoor living. In conclusion, the global interest in pet adoptions surged in the early phase of the pandemic but not sustainable. With the launch of COVID-19 vaccines, there is a concern for separation anxiety and possible abandonment of these newly adopted pets when the owners would leave their homes for work in the future.
Highlights
Cats and dogs are amongst the common domesticated animals for human companionship, and their bonds with humans generally provide mutual psychosocial health benefits [1]
We aimed to investigate the global interest in pet adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic
All data from Google Trend (GT) was exported to a comma separated value (CSV) file which was imported into Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 25.0) for statistical analysis
Summary
Cats and dogs are amongst the common domesticated animals for human companionship, and their bonds with humans generally provide mutual psychosocial health benefits [1]. Along with an increased unemployment rate, the average hours per day spent at home for the general population has considerably increased after the pandemic as compared to the corresponding seasons in 2019 [4]. Sporadic news reports have indicated an increase of dog and cat adoption from animal shelters [5,6,7,8]. Abandonment of pet dogs and animal cruelty have been reported amidst the pandemic [9], probably due to rumors of animals as potential reservoirs of COVID-19 [10, 11].
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