Yet practically all pet owners use and exploit their pets emotionally. The term "pet loves you unconditionally" used as an argument for pets is revealing: They

Yet practically all pet owners use and exploit their pets emotionally. The term "pet loves you unconditionally" used as an argument for pets is revealing: They are mostly kept to give the owner a feeling of being loved, which is much harder to get from other human beings. Ideally suited for increasingly narcissist population. Second, they are used to virtue signal, to increase social capital. The saying goes, if you cared for pets, you would be a good person, and in reverse, if you did not like pets, you would be a bad person. This is obviously wholly unsubstantiated, and there are numerous counterexamples. This is true even more for "rescues", which makes the owners feel like saviors. And as usual, because many people have incorporated the meme of pet ownership so deeply into their identity, they cannot argue about this rationally.