Patrick was found at bottom of garbage chute of an apartment building. Someone had starved him to near death, put in a garbage bag and tossed him away like garbage. A maintenance found Patrick pathetically thin, cold and near death.
Patrick was taken to the vet to get treatments.
We know you love our daily picture of the day. Hundreds of you write back and tell us how much you do, and we love seeing our photos shared with others too.
We have great news for you. That time you spend looking at our cute photos are actually made you sharper……up to 44% sharper. Impressed? We were.
Recently researchers at Japan’s Hiroshima University found people focus better shortly after they’ve viewed cute images.
Here is more about this study in this article from Plos One:
Researchers performed three experiments where they showed subjects a variety of images that included food, people, and adult and baby animals.
In a fine-motor dexterity test, 48 subjects (all between the ages of 18-and 22 and all right handed) played a children’s game very much akin to “Operation.” For those unfamiliar with the game, you use tweezers to remove plastic body parts from metal-encased “cavities” without touching the edges and setting off a buzzer.
Subjects played the games multiple times and, before at least one session, researchers showed them images of puppies and kittens.
Those images, according to the study, helped them play the game 44% better. Full grown dog and cat images also had a positive effect on performance, but not by as wide a margin: just 5%.
Cute images, however, may not only effect motor abilities, but have a positive cognitive effect, as well.
In another experiment, a new group of 18-to-20 year olds performed a series of visual search tasks where they had to identify text and numbers in images and images comprised of text and numbers. They, too, were shown cute images in between tasks. The results weren’t as dramatic, but their ability to properly identify the images did improve by 2%.
So the lesson here? Cute pet pictures are good for you and for your friends too!
Go ahead, test yourself….look at the picture below……..
Now don’t you feel better?
(go ahead….share it with your friends…..it’s a good thing)
