Children love animals and, frequently, the first things they learn in their life are just about them because their curiosity is attracted by their diversity from humans and by the great differences among them.
Children, at first, learn to name and distinguish some pet and wild animals from their pictures and toys that reproduce them and this can be only the first step.

Very useful and educative is for children the presence of pets animals in their house or in the countryside where they live; they can touch, caress them, develop a deep affection and friendship with them, a sincere relation that makes children cry desperately and be really unhappy when their beloved pets are sick or die.

I think that, as it was for me too, children tend to humanize animals, with the help of tales and pictures, transforming them in symbols, characters, like the rabbit, the sheep and the wolf, the cat and the fox of the famous Pinocchio tale and many other Disney cartoons.
The problem is that, sometimes, these symbols are negative, too negative respect to the real nature of the animal (like in the case of the wolf or of the fox) and it would be better children learnt more about its real behaviour.

Children love much pet and generally animal puppies because they identify themselves with them, given that puppies are baby-animals like children are puppy-humans; like them, children play continuously, tend to make troubles just like puppies do and they need much their parents love and care.

So, when children realize how similar they are to puppies and also adult animals like dogs and cats, their curiosity can become respect and love, although not always this feeling continues in their adulthood, given the infinite cruel and irresponsible actions that too many adults commit against animals.

Maybe I exaggerate, but I think children with frequent contacts with pet animals soon realize that they can trust on them as friends and something more because pets don't make the violence and abuses that many humans and even their parents can do. Sometimes, a dog is a better father for a child than the natural one, when the latter is absent, violent or too authoritarian.

Just for all these reasons, pets are used in the "pet therapy" to recover or help children with autism and other psychological or mental handicaps.

Through the animals, many children learn or can learn much about nature because, when a child's curiosity is attracted by the typical animals living in a wood like rabbits, foxes, squirrels, deer, bears, wolves, birds, insects and frogs, they easily learn to appreciate and know the natural environment in which these animals live.

So, they'll like more to walk across woods and meadows with their parents or their teachers and school-fellows, just hoping to see "live" all those animals they had seen only on books, TV, PC, or reproduced in the puppets they have at home.

On the opposite, there are some children who fear many animals because of some bad experiences or wrong information they have got, like having played too hard with their cat that had punished them with a scratch, or having been sting by a bee or a spider or simply because the don't know them and they feel fear and diffidence for what is unknown.

Other children, instead, tend to be cruel with animals, for example, when they have fun shooting at lizards in the parks with their slings or make bad tricks to stray or pet cats.
In these cases, parents would intervene as soon as possible to correct this bad attitude to cruelty.

Learn more about this author, Aldo Bonincontro.
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