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2 4 0 J. Archer completed by 88 British respondents who had lost a pet during the previous year. Many of the items were strongly endorsed by a majority of the sample: for example, 74% said that their thoughts returned again and again to the lost pet, and 60% said that they felt drawn towards animals that reminded them of their lost pet. Neverthe- less, compared to what we would expect in the case of human bereavement, there was a smaller proportion who felt depressed or anxious or angry as a result of the loss. Similarly, in a large sample survey of mid-life couples in the U.S., Gage and Hol- comb (1991) found that death of a pet was perceived as less stressful than the death of an immediate family member or a close friend. In another large sample, of older people in the U.S., Rajaram et al. (1993) found that the death of a pet was associated with much lower depression levels than in the case of a significant other, such as a spouse. In contrast, two other U.S. studies, using an adapted version of scales designed for human grief (the Grief Experience Inventory [GEI]; Sanders et al. 1985) found that the levels following pet loss were comparable with those found alter the loss of a human loved-one. Drake-Hurst (1991) compared the grief responses of people who had lost a pet with those who had lost a spouse and found no significant differ- ences on 9 of the 12 GEl scales. Gerwolls and Labott (1994) carried out a longitudi- nal study of grief following pet loss and found that the values were comparable with standardized figures for loss of a parent, child, or spouse (Sanders et al. 1985). Archer and Winchester (1994) devised a crude assessment of the person's emo- tional attachment to their pet and found that this paralleled the total grief score ob- tained from the questionnaire. Other studies (Gerwolls and Labott 1994: Gosse 1989; Gosse and Barnes 1994) have also found that assessments of the strength of attachment to the former pet predicted measures of grief intensity. These findings support Parkes' general position that the intensity of grief indicates the strength of attachment--in other words, "the cost of commitment." There is therefore evidence from several sources that attachment to pets can be intense, and that the breaking of the bonds can, in some cases, induce a grief reac- tion of comparable severity to loss of a close human relationship. The existence of such attachments to pets does, of course, exist alongside caring and providing for them and provides the proximate reason why humans are willing to do this. W H A T T Y P E O F A T T A C H M E N T D O P E O P L E H A V E W I T H T H E I R P E T S ? Attachment theory arose out of research on the nature of the child's tie with his or her parents (Bowlby 1969, 1973), but it has now been extended to other relation- ships people have with their loved ones (Ainsworth 1989; Bowlby 1969; Hazan and Shaver 1987; Weiss 1988). Thus, both the feelings of the parent for the child as well as those of the child for the parent are covered by the term attachment. ~ In the former case, the dominant feature is caregiving or protecting, and in the latter it is ]But see A i n s w o r t h (1989), w h o s e e k s to restrict the use o f a t t a c h m e n t to c h i l d to parent bonds, a n d to refer to the g e n e r a l c a t e g o r y as " a f f e c t i o n a l b o n d s " ; this is, h o w e v e r , a departure from B o w l b y ' s o r i g i n a l i n c l u s i v e u se o f the term, a n d f r o m the w a y the t e r m is u s e d b y r e s e a r c h e r s on a d u l t a t t a c h m e n t such as W e i s s (1988), H a z a n a n d S h a v e r (1987) a n d B e r m a n and S p e r l i n g (1994).

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