Humans love to have pets, but in a space colony there will be limited food supplies, and the importance of recycling everything. This means that there won’t be many other pets left in a space colony. So, what kinds of pets might you have? Keeping plants as pets may work, but sometimes this is not enough for humans.
Small mammals and rodents might work, but that too could be a problem, and we don’t know how well they’d do in space. They may do better than humans, and they may reproduce well, but then they will eat the colonists out and about in the house. So taking cats and dogs into space might not make any sense either – what about rodents, mice or other small creatures? It’s hard to say.
NASA took spiders into space and put them in a zero-gravity environment, and they did so well, they immediately created a web, and waited for the insects to catch it. There weren’t any bugs to catch, but they went ahead and built their home, and approved their genetic plan. Spiders are fun to watch, and they are interesting, and thus they might be great pets for space colonists.
Yes, some space colonists might be afraid of spiders, but if non-venomous spiders were used, it wouldn’t be so bad, and they might just get used to them. It seems that humans need pets for a reason, something to take care of, and perhaps it is part of their genetic component and the psychological dispensation of raising a family that causes this in the human psyche.
If we deny this, and do not allow pets in our space colonies, we may find that some humans and colonists become depressed, distressed and bored, and this may affect them negatively. Now then, I’m not sure if spiders would make the greatest pets for space colonists, but it’s an idea to get rid of them and something to think about. There will be pros and cons to moving any species into space, or to living on another planet – just as there will be challenges that humans themselves will face.
Maybe we need to do some studies to see what kind of pets make the most sense for space colonists and what, if any, other species we can take with us. In fact, I hope you appreciate this line of conversation and these forward-thinking thoughts. I ask you to think about all this and think about it.