Pet Tech Today: Does A Dog Really Need A Fitbit?
(Content taken from this week’s edition of the hi, tech. newsletter.)
The relationship between humans and animals reveals much about our view of the world and our place in it.
Animals can be symbols, companions, food, gifts, transport, even gods.
Their place in our collective imagination is in evidence as far back as the earliest cave paintings. There were plenty of bison and woolly rhinos etched on the walls at Chauvet, but no likenesses of people.
The links between animals and technology are embedded in our history, too. Animals have provided the inspiration for some of our most important inventions and they were only marginalized in our daily lives after the Industrial Revolution.
To select a few examples: Mosquito stings helped shape the design of modern needles; sea otters’ skin inspired wetsuits; and you can’t have a shark-skin suit without shark skin.
This is just a quick round-up of my favorite animal-led innovations in the works today:
- The Department of Homeland Security has a device that mimicks the inner workings of a lobster’s eyes, allowing them to “see through” steel to identify contraband.
- The future of contact lenses lies in the eyes of the gecko. Their eyes are 350 times more sensitive than ours; scientists want to replicate their structure to provide people with night vision.
- One company is working on car panels based on the inner structure of a toucan’s bill. The toucan’s mighty bill contains a combination of bone and foam that is both light and strong.
“Follow my nose, it always knows!”, as Toucan Sam ordered way back in the 1982 ad for Froot Loops. 37 years later, we’re taking the wise bird’s advice.
Our relationship with domestic animals is always tied to the present status of our own species.
Many dog varieties were bred specifically to fulfil a role in people’s lives. For example, the Australian Terrier was “developed” in the 19th century to provide companionship and hunt pesky critters down the mines.
We anthropomorphize the pooches with characteristics like “loyal” and “fun-loving”, but these are the by-products of human intentions rather than innate proclivities. The animal is always viewed in human terms.
The dog show I attended this weekend played host to legion idiosyncrasies, but one of the most pervasive was the use of the letters in a dog breed name as first letters of the breed’s personality traits.
It’s like an acrostic crossword, where we reverse-engineer the word and apply some causality to the happenstance of its composite letters.
Ever wondered where an Australian Terrier got its name? I bet you assumed it’s because it’s a terrier from Australia.
I was also a fool, until I saw this:
They’re excellent dogs, to be fair to them. One of my Top 5 from the show.
Anways, the residual effect of our co-dependency with animals is still seen today. The animals exhibit the traits we engineered them to possess, and we exercise them to keep the lid on those primal urges.
The etymology of the word “pet” is debated, but most agree it stems from a combination of terms meaning “indulged child” and “animal companion.” Sounds about right.
“Pet” has been in use since the 1500’s, but we have kept domesticated dogs for at least 15,000 years.
Scientists have analyzed what leads us to keep pets today. We know they can be good pals, they get us out to exercise, and they even help us socialize with other people.
One study has found that there may be a genetic aspect to our decision to keep a pet. Analysis of Swedish twins found that “genetic factors greatly contribute to dog ownership in Sweden, with heritability estimated to be 57% for females and 51% for males.”
Those figures are significantly higher than the national averages for Sweden.
Yes, at around this point you might be wondering when we’ll get to the gadgets.
The preamble does serve some purpose, nonetheless.
One of the core aims of this friendly newsletter is to understand how technology shapes — and is shaped by — both our collective culture and our individual consciousness.
Lofty aims, indeed, and aims that may well remain out of reach, but we’ll try.
The way we coddle our pets through technology is more revealing than we might assume, in this regard.
For one, pets play a significant role in our daily lives:
- 68% of U.S. households, or about 85 million families, own a pet.
- Dogs are the most popular pet globally, owned by 33% of households across 22 countries, with cats coming in second, at 23%.
- Argentina (82%), Mexico (81%) and Brazil (76%) have the highest rates of overall pet ownership.
- In South Korea, just 31 percent report having any pet living with them, followed by Hong Kong at 35 percent and Japan at 37 percent.
The distinctions in pet ownership trends across countries show that our relationship with domestic animals is shaped by our local society.
We can go further to look at the types of dog that countries prefer worldwide:
There is no “human” desire to keep small dogs. Rather, certain societies maintain this preference.
We can also see the eternal Cats v Dogs battle in a chart:
There are notable distinctions at the city level, too. This chart introduces children to the analysis, alongside cats and dogs:
Although we have always kept pets and the ownership percentages are steady over the past few decades, we are simply spending a lot more money on our pampered pals today.
This paves the way for a profitable pet tech industry. After all, there are only so many things you can buy for a cat or dog before you run out of ideas.
The size of the pet tech market today:
- Global Market Insights, Inc. estimates that pet tech market size will exceed the USD 20 billion mark by 2025.
- 56% of pet owners in the US have bought special technology for their animal.
- VC funding for pet tech startups has grown from $67 million in 2012 to over $500 million in 2019.
- The number of patent applications that incorporate IoT technologies for domestic animals more than doubled from 28 in 2014 to 66 in 2018.
This is clearly a good time to launch a new gadget for pets. But are there are any useful pet technologies, or are companies simply trying to cash in on our desire to connect with domestic animals?
In the next section, we will explore some of the best and worst pet tech innovations out there today, before assessing what this technology really means.
BARKING MAD: PET TECH TODAY
“We’ve invented pet recognition — a brand new thing.
It leverages “petificial” intelligence — AI that can recognize the face of your pet, take a selfie and send the owners a short clip of their pet when they have to be away.”
— Jason Yu, PetBot co-founder
It is easy (and fun) to dismiss ‘pet tech’ as just a ludicrous expression of our love for small animals, through superfluous technological advances.
Pet clothing was a step too far, for my money. After all, a dog needs a jacket like a camel needs a motorcycle.
A dog wearing a jacket on top of its perfectly designed, natural coat, like a kid dressing in his dad’s bulky clothes to sneak into an R-rated movie, is on the harmless end of the Late Stage Capitalism spectrum, admittedly.
That said, some examples of pet tech are genuinely useful.
As such, we can say that this industry is prone to the same forces that define any other area of technology today.
Most innovations will fail, but a few will fit seamlessly into our lives.
The ones that make the cut will hopefully be the likes of this pet feeder that can be programmed to dispense portions of food throughout the day:
For owners that need to leave their pet alone for a day, this seems like a helpful tool.
Other automated feeding tools are available, such as this one, modelled by a dog that looks like he knows he is in an ad and would rather be elsewhere:
This self-cleaning cat litter box is a work of quiet genius, too:
Of course, these technologies are from representative of the wider pet tech industry today.
Pet tech is now normalized to the extent that national newspapers can run listicles about the ‘Top 6 Fitness Trackers for Dogs’ without the slightest hint of irony.
Below, I have tried to round up the most ambitious, ill-advised, and/or crazy pet tech on the market today.
iFetch
The iFetch takes the hard work out of throwing a ball. The pet owner places the ball in the top and the iFetch shoots the ball out, to one of three programmed distances.
It is possible to train the dog to put the ball in the machine too, so you don’t need to stretch a muscle at any stage. The design is nice enough, but it makes me think of solitary prisoners throwing a tennis ball against the wall.
GoPro Harness for Dogs
Yes, it allows you to strap a GoPro to your dog, so it can film what it sees (the ground, cats, lampposts) and then watch it back later.
The promotional bumpf on the website says it can turn your dog into a YouTube star, which actually sounds plausible. Used creatively and with the right voice-over, it could even be a smash hit TV show.
No More Woof
It was difficult to pick just one device that lets dogs “speak”. No More Woof made the cut primarily because it incorporates a loudspeaker.
Invented by Scandinavian scientists, it interprets signal patterns in the dog’s brainwaves and turns these into short messages that are played through the speaker.
For example, if the doorbell rings, the dog can say, “I am curious as to who that may be.”
At dinner time, the dog can say, “Although I am hungry, I would prefer another food option tonight.”
Those are the actual phrases the company cites as examples.
No doubt, these genteel linguistic stylings are at odds with the dog’s frantic and erratic physical behavior at such moments.
Also from this company: the pet flying carpet. Still in development, it will, well, let the pet fly on a carpet like Aladdin. Their chaotic website is here.
Dog Pacer Treadmill
I have mentioned this piece of pet tech to a few people this week and most have assumed it to be a joke.
Alas, it is very real.
The website states that it is one of the most affordable dog treadmills on the market which, tragically, suggests that there are others.
And oh boy, are there others. This is the Firepaw dog treadmill, available for just ￡899 plus ￡99 postage.
In an already absurd environment, it is the ￡99 postage that really grabs my attention here, for what looks like a medieval torture contraption.
I can imagine contexts in which an exercise machine for a dog might make sense, in theory. Inclement weather, some sort of injury, lack of time on the owner’s part, could all make this gadget useful. It is a direct result of the times we live in.
But, how do you get a dog to run on a treadmill?
I’ve found it impossible just to get a dog into the bath, nevermind getting one to jog on the spot.
PETKIT Smart Cozy Cat
Cats may be smarter than dogs (controversial, and I stand by it), but they aren’t getting away from the claws of the pet tech industry.
This hilariously over-the-top device is a smart house for cats, replete with temperature control, sleep monitor, and wind-path humidity sensors. It has an app, so you can tweak the temperature while you’re out and about.
I befriended a stray cat in Sardinia recently and she was happy enough with a bowl of milk and the odd packet of Kit-E-Kat. Whether a cat needs air-con is debatable, at best.
That’s not even the strangest part of this smart home. Just look at the picture they have used to illustrate the product in action:
They seem to have Photoshopped in a picture of a startled cat, which gives the sense that the animal is having a particularly bad time in there.
Similar inventions exist for dogs, I should say, including the Samsung Dreamhouse for Dogs. At least, they used a picture of a dog that looks mildly content to be there.
Furbo
We round off this section with Furbo, the treat-tossing dog camera.
With Furbo, the dog owner can check in on their pet throughout the day and press a button to give the dog a treat.
It even sends a push notification to the owner’s phone if the dog barks.
We got a camera to keep an eye on the family dog, Champers, a few years ago. This is newsworthy only because of that day he found the camera:
We end with Furbo for other reasons, too.
It raises questions about the impact of technology on our understanding of the world. Everything is codified, “data-driven”, controlled through a device.
That may lead to fundamental changes in how we relate to animals.
“[The attention economy] ties into this idea that everything is a machine, and it just needs to be fixed, or made more efficient.”
— Jenny Odell
Why look at animals?
“Just in case you missed it, the newest trend in pet care involves upping its tech quotient and why not: isn’t that what we’ve been doing with our own lives and lifestyles of late?”
This quotation is taken from a pet tech article I encountered during my weekly research.
It stands out because it is intended as a rhetorical question, but actually demands a straight answer.
We are different to animals. To pretend otherwise, to enclose them within the limitations of our data-led world view, is to reduce them to something much less than their lived reality.
And yet, the pet tech market is growing rapidly.
Pet owners can buy a Fitbit for their dog, then compare their fitness and sleep statistics. What precisely are they comparing here?
We have reduced our own experience to the purely mechanical and, satisfied that this reflects reality, exported the model to other species. Everything can be optimized, even our dog’s nap time.
The historical “usefulness” of animals is based on their points of difference to people, not their similarities.
Even in royal courts, where pets were often an accessory or a gift, they were still known to have a sui generis nature.
Today, we do still collaborate with animals in some situations. Animals can serve a range of important roles based on their sharpened senses, and can even help people overcome periods of grief.
In more commercial environs, animals are becoming an extension of our own lives.
Pets are absorbed silently into our curated online personas.
They wear clothes, they inhabit memes, they even work out.
So, does the impact of this shift go beyond the superficial?
By delegating our responsibilities as pet owners to technology, we relocate the the focal points of the relationship.
We fall prey to misty-eyed myopia if we believe that our animals are so compassionate just because they really like us as people.
The relationship is always one of co-dependence.
If machines start dishing out the treats, those puppy dog eyes will be trained on the robots instead.
Another rhetorical question prompted much of this newsletter’s ponderings: Why look at animals?
In an influential 1977 essay, John Berger posed this question before discussing our changing perspective on the animal world.
We are living through another period of change, driven by the hold technology has taken over our lives.
Just as we should think carefully before depending on digital assistants to get things done, we should consider how we want to interact with animals before inviting pet tech into the home.
We will not change their sensory apparatus in the process. A dog does not know what a selfie is and, God willing, never will.
Animals should be appreciated for their existence outside of our tracked, measured, and optimized world.
The rhythms of their lives are different to ours. A connection with them is a timely reminder that our reality is only one of many, rather than some a priori ‘truth’.
Animals should not be forced into assuming our narcissistic, oft-nonsensical habits.
We can learn a lot more from them than they can from us.