Have you ever noticed that most people who like dogs don’t really care for cats — and vice-versa? And that dog owners tend to date other dog owners? It turns out that a lot of that is true, and the people that choose to own dogs are pretty different than the cat people. Hunch.com, which is like the Netflix recommendation engine but not just for movies, collected a bunch of data about dog and cat owners and compiled it into an infographic. But infographics are supposed to distill data so that it’s easily digested by us visual creatures, and this is not a very well done one as it’s pretty dense to read. So instead of re-posting it, here are the highlights; and a picture of a dog:

• Most households have a pet (40% don’t), and the most popular arrangement is dog-only (26% of households), followed by cat-only (16%) and both (13%)
• More cats are pets than dogs, but they’re in a lot less households. So this means that people who have dogs probably only have one dog, but people who have cats are crazy cat ladies. Which makes little sense from the animal’s standpoint since dogs run in packs and are generally very social, whereas cats are solitary. But it makes a lot of sense from a practical standpoint, since cats are clean and low-maintenance.
• Cat people tend to fit the description of a single woman living in New York City: they’re more liberal and introverted, more likely to have a graduate degree (which is probably what makes them more liberal), to rent, to live in a city in Europe (which is probably what makes them more likely to rent), to be hipsters, to be less active, to be late adopters… and they like CSI.
• Dog people tend to be Jonathan Kent: more likely to be conservative, to have kids, to own a house in a rural area in the Americas, to be very active outdoors, to like low-brow humor, to be early adopters and own an iPhone… and they like Curb Your Enthusiasm

Photo by -=RoBeE=-

So if we were to give in to broad over-generalizations, we would say Democrats like cats and Republicans like dogs. Even if that’s not strictly true, they’re better mascots than a donkey and an elephant, right?

From Hunch, via Laughing Squid