Pets have been a companion to humans for millennia.
In fact, according to Greger Larson, director of the University of Oxford’s palaeogenomics and bio-archaeology research network, humans have likely kept baby animals for amusement as long as humans have lived.
But the story of exactly how animals became domesticated is much debated and often only glimpsed at from scraps of fossils and DNA.
Scientists largely agree that dogs were the first domestic animal. They were tamed and used for work or for their meat.
A study published by University of Maine researchers in 2011 found evidence that dogs were being bred, and, eaten, by humans living in Texas some 9,400 years ago.
A more recent study in 2017 found dogs were domesticated in a single event by humans living in Eurasia.
Dr Krishna Veeramah, an assistant professor in evolution at Stony Brook University, told MailOnline: ‘We’ve found clear evidence that dogs were domesticated 20,000 to 40,000 years ago.
‘New research last year provocatively suggested that dogs could have been domesticated twice but our conclusion was there is no evidence for dual domestication.
‘We would argue that finding evidence for only one domestication event is a big deal, because it is very important to helping us understand how domestication works.’
His research found that dogs evolved to be a separate species from wild wolves sometime between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago.
But it’s not known if they were the first pets, and kept for companionship.
A study this year found compared the genomes, or complete genetic codes, of modern domestic and wild rabbits to see how long it had taken them to diverge.
Using the known mutation rate of certain biomolecules as a ‘molecular clock’ they found it was not possible to pin down rabbit domestication to a single date or event.
Instead, the creation of tame buns appeared to be a cumulative effect stretching back to Roman times and possibly the Stone Age.
The story of domestication is not a linear progression from wild to domestic, Larsen told the Smithsonian.
‘These things exist on a continuum,’ says Larson. He said when the first pet came into being is ‘a bit like asking when did life begin?’