Throughout the history of the human species, animals have played an important part in human life, and vice versa. In the early hunter-gatherer/nomadic cultures, animals were viewed as prey, but also as dangerous predators. The same holds true for the animals' perspective: some species might have considered the human a predator, some a prey. For other species, humans might just have been a neutral part of the environment. When domestication began, the human-animal relationship developed towards a symbiosis in which the human provided protection from predators and food in exchange for animal products (food and fur) and power. For some individuals, e.g. animals 'adopted' by humans at an early age, the human was a social partner with whom they played and exchanged affiliative behaviour.

1. Animal roles 318