Review of international conference on the human/companion animal bond held at Philadelphia, USA, October 5th-7th, 1981.

HE RECENT Philadelphia meeting was the latest and largest in a series of scientific gatherings for what is still a very young area for serious study. O,Th~ BSAVA organised a conference on ’Pets in Society’ back in 1974 with just under 100 delegates attending. This was followed by another in January 1980 in London of about 180 delegates, whose proceedings were recently published. ’ The Philadelphia meeting gathered no fewer than 450 people together, and the breadth of disciplines from which those attending were drawn, as well as the quality of some of the work reported, shows the growing status of human/ companion animal studies as an area worthy of academic research.