Episode 213 – Finding the Perfect Pet Online

You can read a preview of “Dating in a Digital World” by Eli J. Finkel, Paul W. Eastwick, Benjamin R. Karney, Harry T. Reis, and Susan Sprecher, the article that precipitated this meandering, in Scientific American-Mind here.

In some ways the hazards posed when trying to choose the ideal animal online aren’t that new. Two common old-time sayings address this vary topic. Most of us have heard the warning not to buy a pig in a poke, poke being an old slang term for a sack. Savvy farmers who knew that unscrupulous sellers would put cats instead of the more valuable (to the farmer) young pigs in the sack would insist on opening the bag and carefully examining the contents before laying out any cash. When they did, they’d  let the cat of the bag and expose the fraud. Mixed metaphor though it may be relative to purchasing or adopting animals online, it’s something to keep in mind.