TNI Bureau: Children, who owns a pet are smarter than those who does not – suggests a recent study. In the study by Pets at home, the researchers quizzed about one thousand pet-owning children, aged between 5 to 16 years and found that 79% of them voted for owning a pet as they had a positive effect for the same.

Wildlife TV presenter and animal lover Michaela Strachan has approved the findings. “Toto, our dog, is part of our family and has brought huge benefits to Ollie, my son. Jade’s two rescue dogs, Marley and Timmy, have had a really positive impact” says Strachan also informing that he has a seven-year-old and three older step children and all of them own a pet each.

The study also revealed that 92% of the children probed intimated about rats or mice to be the most likely to help them with their homework while 86% believed that dogs are good and 80% of the children prescribed cat.

The research also got the statistics that almost half of the children believe that, owning and looking after a pet makes them happier while one third of them did not responded and one fifth said they feel more intelligent owning a pet.

Also, the study found that owning chinchillas and degus had the biggest influence on a child’s cleverness, with 55% of children owning such pets feeling more intelligent.

Interestingly, the study brought out some other exciting findings such as how the children benefit in different ways by owning a pet apart from intelligence.  While 36% of them said that they had become more caring, 34% felt a greater sense of responsibility and one in five had become better at talking to people.

Hence, owning a pet can bring so much pleasure to a family. It can increase a child’s sense of responsibility, nurture a more caring attitude and develop self-confidence or in whole it makes the kid smarter as per the research.