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As humanity has got richer, animals’ roles have changed. People need their services less than before. Fewer wolves and bandits meant less demand for dogs for protection; the internal combustion engine made horses redundant; modern sanitation kept rats in check and made cats less useful. No longer necessities, domestic animals became luxuries. Petkeeping seems to kick in en masse when household incomes rise above roughly $5,000. It is booming.
internal combustion engine内燃机petkeeping这个词由pet和keep组成，我们可以联想到housekeeping这个词，它指的是家务，家政服务，都是和house有关的。那么同理可以得出petkeeping则是对宠物(pet)的照料，托管等服务。en masse这是一个法语词组，表示“全体，一起的”，一般是数量比较多的。 随着人们越来越富裕，动物们承担的角色也发生了变化。人们比以前更少地需要他们的服务。较少的狼和土匪意味着把狗用来保护的需求减少; 内燃机使马匹显得多余; 现代卫生条件使鼠患受到控制，从而使得猫的用处减少了。家畜不再是必需品了，它们变成了奢侈品。当家庭收入增加到大约5,000美元以上时，宠物照料服务开始大量出现。它正在蓬勃发展。 The trend is not a new one. Archaeologists have found 10,000-year-old graves in which dogs and people are buried together. Some cultures—such as in Scandinavia, where canines have long been both working dogs and companions—have kept pets for millennia. But these days the pet-keeping urge has spread even to parts of the world which have no tradition of snuggling up on a comfy chair with a furry creature. caninescanine的复数形式，表示“犬”，可作为dog的替换词。snugglingsnuggle的ing形式，表示依偎，蜷伏的动作，一般是指比较舒服的依偎在人，蜷伏在沙发等等。She snuggled up in Lea’s lap to listen to the story. 她依偎在李的腿上听故事。 这种趋势并不新奇。考古学家发现在一万年前的坟墓里狗和人被埋在一起。一些文化 - 例如在斯堪的纳维亚半岛，狗狗长期以来一直都是工作和生活的好伙伴 - 他们已养宠物数千年。但是现在，即使在那些没有习惯于和毛茸茸的爱宠一起依偎在椅子上的地方，这种宠物饲养的冲动已经蔓延开来了。
The pet business is growing even faster than pet numbers, because people are spending more and more money on them. No longer are they food-waste-recyclers, fed with the scraps that fall from their masters’ tables. Pet-food shelves groan with delicacies crafted to satisfy a range of appetites, including ice cream for dogs and foods for pets that are old, diabetic or suffer from sensitive digestion; a number of internet services offer bespoke food,tailored to the pet’s individual tastes. groan with sth ( formal ) to be full of sth 被某物堆满(或摆满、装满、充满)tables groaning with food 摆满食物的桌子bespoke订做做，定制的。和下文的tailored意思相似，也可以用custom-made. 宠物业的增长速度甚至超过宠物数量的增长，因为人们花费越来越多的钱在爱宠上面。他们不再是食物垃圾回收商，不再只吃从主人的桌子上掉下来的食物。宠物食品架堆满着精心制作的美食，以满足各种食欲的需求，包括狗用的冰淇淋和专门为老年狗狗，糖尿病患者或消化敏感准备的宠物食品; 许多互联网服务提供定制的食物，根据宠物的个人口味量身定制。
In the business this is called “pet humanisation”—the tendency of pet owners to treat their pets as part of the family. This is evident in the names given to dogs, which have evolved from Fido, Rex and Spot to—in America—Bella, Lucy and Max. It is evident in the growing market for pet clothing, pet grooming and pet hotels. It is evident in the demand for breeds such as the French bulldog, which, tellingly, looks a bit like a human baby.
在宠物业中，这被称为“宠物人性化” - 宠物主人倾向于将宠物视为家庭的一部分。这一点在给狗的名字中很明显，在美国，狗的名字已经从Fido，Rex和Spot演变为Bella, Lucy和Max。在宠物服装，宠
People still assume that pets must be working for humanity in some way, perhaps making people healthier or less anxious. But the evidence for that is weak. Rather, new research suggests that canines have evolved those irresistible “puppy-dog eyes” precisely to manipulate human emotions. It has worked. The species that once enslaved others now toils to pay for the care of its pets, which lounge on the sofa waiting to be taken to the grooming salon. Sentimental Americans often refer to themselves not as cat-owners but as the cat’s “mommy” or “daddy”. South Koreans go one further, describing themselves as cat “butlers”, pandering to every feline whim. Watch a hapless dog-walker trailing “his” hound, plastic bag in hand to pick up its mess, and you have to wonder: who’s in charge now? lounge这里lounge作动词，表示懒洋洋地站[坐，躺]着butler管家feline whimfeline=猫的 whim=一时的兴致;突发的奇想 人们仍然认为宠物必须以某种方式为人类工作，也许会使人们更健康或更少焦虑。但却少有证据是能证明这一点的。相反，新的研究表明，犬类已经进化出那些让人不可抗拒的“小狗眼”，恰恰是为了操纵人类的情感。它奏效了。曾经奴役过其他人的物种现在辛苦付钱照顾宠物，这些宠物在沙发上等待被带到美容沙龙。那些感性一些的美国人不再把自己称为猫的主人，而是是猫的“妈妈”或“爸爸”。韩国人则入戏更深，将自己描述为猫的“管家”，他们会去迎合猫的每一个突发奇想。看着一个倒霉的遛狗者拖着“他的”猎犬，手里拿着塑料袋来收拾狗的粪便，你不得不怀疑：现在谁才是主人?
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