Many men and women will agree that caring for a dog can be attractive in a potential partner, and new research published in Anthrozoös: A multidisciplinary journal of the interactions of people and animals supports this.

In collaboration with the pet store chain PetSmart, the researchers recruited 1,210 single pet owners through the online dating service Match.com. In the pool of participants, 60% were women and 40% were men; 72% were dog owners and 42% cat owners.

The subjects took a 21-question online survey about how pets entered into their dating lives and 35% percent of women and 26% of men said they had been more attracted to someone because they owned a pet.

Cat owners may feel ‘ruffly’ treated by the results of the survey with dogs serving more commonly as social barometers in the dating arena than cats did, with dogs winning 500 of the 600 votes for the sexiest pet a guy could own.

Author of the recently published article ‘The Roles of Pet Dogs and Cats in Human Courtship and Dating’ Peter Gray, said: “The direction of these patterns in results was toward cats being exploited less often than dogs as “social tools” in the dating world”.