The article collects amazing stories of how pets saved people in extreme situations, a dog warned of an earthquake, a shepherd dog saved its owner and a child from electric shock, a cat woke its owner during a fire, and a rabbit smelled a gas leak. The author also says experts believe pets have generally become less aggressive and noticeably smarter. Why animals increasingly show such sensitivity and heroism is worth reading more about.

People have always lived alongside animals, and animals helped their owners, making life easier. But in today’s civilized society, animals most often serve as decoration, a living toy for their owners. And what happens in extreme situations—how do our beloved pets behave?
Interested in this topic, we found many stories of the heroism of man’s best friends.
Most often, dogs appear in such stories. For example, in one Russian city, the residents of an entire courtyard fed a stray dog that had appeared from nowhere; it was a quiet, peaceable animal. But one night the dog let out a piercing howl at the door, and the sounds were so heart-rending that people rushed out into the courtyard. As soon as they were outside, the walls of the house collapsed from a powerful earthquake.
In the Moscow region, a shepherd dog sacrificed itself to save its owner and her five-year-old daughter. In the twilight, the woman was walking the young dog when suddenly it rushed forward and clamped its teeth onto an exposed wire hanging from a power line. According to electricians, if it had not been for the dog, either the girl or her mother could have received a fatal electric shock.
There is a belief that black cats bring bad luck; however, a cat from the United Kingdom disproved this claim. 87-year-old Bernice Mockdoval lay down to rest after lunch and fell asleep. When a fire broke out in the house, the only one who smelled the smoke was a black cat named Joe. Seeing that his owner did not notice the smoke, he began to “sound the alarm.” The fluffy creature started meowing loudly and waking its owner.
And recently, the hero of the day in the United Kingdom was a rabbit. A married couple—Warren Taylor and Casey Leathers—locked their two-year-old rabbit in the kitchen so it would not chew on the wires in the house. However, the animal sensed the sharp smell of gas in time, broke out, ran up to the second floor, and began to scratch energetically at the bedroom door of its owners.
By that moment, the house was already almost filled with a suffocating smell. The awakened people reacted in time, aired out the rooms, and called an emergency crew. It later turned out that the leak had occurred because of a worn-out gas valve gasket. The owner of the house declared that the rabbit had performed a true feat by escaping from the locked room and warning the people. “In order to get outside, it has to jump up and open the door handle. It is a true hero,” emphasized 29-year-old Taylor.
And there are many such stories. By the way, specialists say that our pets have started to love us more. According to their data, animals’ aggressiveness toward humans around the world has sharply decreased. According to those same animal psychologists, dogs, for example, have become “more human.” They have learned to understand up to 500 words, sharply increased their “intelligence quotient” by about 30% over the past 20 years, and adopted many human character traits.
Scientists have found that animals have become smarter thanks to the suppression of the aggression gene and the culling of vicious individuals. So specialists are confidently saying that we are spending time with new animals: affectionate, compliant, intelligent, and, one might say, humanlike.