Argentina: the Country with the Most Pets Per Capita

According to the results of a study conducted by the market research company, GfK, 80 percent of the respondents stated that they had at least one pet. This is a much higher average than the global population, with an estimated 56 percent having pets.

Argentinians are major pet owners and prefer dogs to cats

The survey was carried out in 22 countries with 27 thousand participants and, among other conclusions they reached, some points stand out:

• After Argentina, the most pet-friendly nations are Mexico (79%), Russia (73%) and the USA (7O%).
• Argentina is also the leading nation that prefers to have dogs as pets. 66 percent of people who have pets choose dogs.
• The preference for dogs is common across the other Latin American nations. For example,  Mexico (64%) and Brazil (58%). For their part, half of Americans with pets also prefer dogs.
• The countries with the highest number of house cats per capita are Russia (57%), France (41%) and the USA (39%). In addition, Europeans, in general, tend to lean towards cats as pets.

Argentina is the country with the most pets per capita, according to the results of a global survey. Eighty percent of respondents reported having a companion animal and, of this percentage, 66 percent favored dogs.

Asian nations have the fewest number of pets per capita

Among the other information that emerged from this global survey, there are some curious facts. For example:

• Three Asian countries are among those countries that have the fewest pets per capita: South Korea (31%), Hong Kong (35%) and Japan (37%).
• China is the place where fish are the most popular pets. 17 percent of interviewees reported having a fish in their home. Similarly, 16 percent of inhabitants in Turkey and 15 percent of those in Belgium report owning fish.
• 1 in 5 people living in Turkey also said they have birds as pets whereas bird owners make up 11 percent of people in Spain and in Brazil.

Other information about Argentina, the country with the most pets per capita

The recent study by GfK confirms research carried out 5 years earlier by the Millward Brown company in Latin America.

In that study, they concluded that Argentina was the country in that region with the largest number of pets, since 78 percent of the interviewees said they had one (63 percent with dogs and 26 percent with cats).

To reach this conclusion, 1,500 people between 18 and 65 years old were interviewed  in the cities of Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario, and Mendoza, as well as in different locations of Buenos Aires’s suburbs.

The data collected from the interviews highlighted that:

• In 1 of every 3 households where they choose to have dogs, have more than one.
• Half of the domestic cats share a home with a dog.

Argentinians prefer adopting their pets

In addition to the good news that Argentina is the country with the most pets per capita, there is other encouraging data, since most of the interviewees consider domestic animals to be another member of their family. And adoption is also prioritized over the purchase of purebred animals.

Thus, 76 percent of the dogs and 90 percent of the cats in Argentina enter their homes either as a gift or because they were picked up from the street.

However, since nothing is perfect, the percentages of pet sterilization there are still very low.

Undoubtedly, education and raising awareness in this sense is a task that requires great effort at a global level to avoid overpopulation and abandonment of domestic animals.