Are robot pets the future?

Shayne Jacopian for redOrbit.com – @ShayneJacopian

Does a robot care if you rub its belly or scratch behind its ears?

Questions like these are going to start popping up when, as a paper published in the latest edition of Frontiers of Veterinary Science predicts, robot dogs begin to replace real dogs as pets become a luxury in the overpopulated and not-so-distant future.

We think Jimmy Neutron had the right idea.

“It’s not a question of centuries from now. If 10 billion human beings live on the planet in 2050 as predicted, it’s likely to occur sooner than we think,” says Dr. Jean-Loup Rault, an animal welfare researcher at the University of Melbourne.

“We are already seeing people form strong emotional bonds with robot dogs in Japan … [where] people are becoming so attached to their robot dogs that they hold funerals for them when the circuits die.”

While we’re wondering what this means for the future of pet taxidermy (hint: it’s bleak and non-existent in this scenario), Dr. Rault’s research seeks to understand how this technology could influence our relationships with real animals in the future. Will the popularity of disposable, artificial animals impact how humans care for real ones?

“Of course we care about live animals, but if we become used to a robotic companion that doesn’t need food, water, or exercise, perhaps it will change how humans care about other living beings,” explains Rault.

Perhaps these artificial pets will eventually be so similar to real animals that we forget there’s a difference: “When engineers work on robotic dogs, they work on social intelligence, they address what people need from their dogs: companionship, love, obedience, dependence,” Rault says.

But how will real dogs react to the new robot companions? Thinkstock had the answer for us.

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