An environmentally friendly company called GreenGoose makes cute little wireless stickers containing motion sensors, allowing you to track anything that moves, from a pet or child to your phone, or even to check if your spouse left the toilet seat up.

FORBES: Why Sensors Are a Force of Context

Everybody liked him, though it was a temptation for those who knew him to patronise him, to treat him like a favourite child or pet, such was the inequality of his and their knowledge about his life.

ECONOMIST: H.M.

It is a picture of her as a child cuddling her pet dog, Brandy.

BBC: Torment of murdered girl's family

Oxytocin in particular is crucial in bonding partner to partner (levels correlate with the success of a relationship), as well as parent to child, even pet-owner to pet.

WSJ: Looking Beyond Oxytocin, the Love Drug | Marvels

From feral child to "human pet" at court in Georgian England, Peter the Wild Boy caused a sensation.

BBC: Who was Peter the Wild Boy?

Her research team at Henry Ford Hospital was the first to show that having a pet in the house during your child's first year of life may protect him or her from developing allergies -- a finding that's since been duplicated in other studies.

CNN: Where do allergies come from?

As a lonely child in Brooklyn, Dr Pepperberg owned pet birds from the age of four, and daydreamed about being able to understand animals' thoughts.

ECONOMIST: Alex the African Grey

You might start to think that staying at home would be the sensible thing to do, only this too is ridden with potential dangers for your unborn child: from ice-cream, to pet shampoo, to hair dye.

BBC: Pregnancy advice 'scaremongering'