Applied Animal Ethology, 10 (1983) l- 4 1 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam - Printed in The Netherlands Guest Editorial APPLIED CANINE AND FELINE ETHOLOGY K.A. HOUPT New York State College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 (U.S.A.) INTRODUCTION The majority of the articles in Applied Animal Ethology have dealt with farm animal behavior. This is most appropriate because farm animals are those that produce food and fiber for the human population. In order to ensure op- timal production with minimal suffering to the farm animals, more informa- tion on their behavior is essential. However, there is another large population of domestic animals whose behavior deserves study. These animals are the com- mon household pets - the dog and the cat. With increasing urbanization of the world, most people have little or no contact with farm animals. This lack of contact is hastened by the success of modern agricultural techniques that result in fewer animals producing more eggs, milk, meat and wool. Therefore, the public, in general, is more aware of cats and dogs than of pigs and poultry. Although there are only 48 million dogs in the United States, they are owned by 48 million families, whereas the 90 million pigs are owned by 650 000 peo- ple. The ratio of humans to pet animals is much greater than the ratio of peo- ple to farm animals, and there is much greater direct contact between people and pet animals than there is between people and farm animals. The result is that there is much greater public awareness and interest in dogs and cats than in farm animals, despite the greater economic importance of the latter. Another result of the direct contact between people and pet animals is that there are more opportunities for problems to develop. There are two types of problems; private problems and public ones. The private problems concern the relation- ship between the owner and his or her pet; the public problems concern dam- age, the health risks and the general nuisance that, improperly restrained dogs and to a lesser extent, cats, cause. Applied ethologists are called upon with increasing frequency to address these problems. To solve them we need as much knowledge as possible about the behavior of cats and dogs. In order to encourage the study of canine and feline behavior, we invited papers on the subject for this special issue of Applied Animal Ethology. Cat and dog behavior has not been a neglected area, but, heretofore, most studies have used these domestic animals either as models for human behavior or, to a lesser extent, in comparative studies. Early studies of the psychology of learning frequently used cats and dogs, and compared their abilities to learn a delayed response or to solve a puzzle box with those of primates, humans 0304-3762/83/0000_0000/$03.00 0 1983 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company