Empathy in Parallel Carnivores: A Naturalistic Neurobiological Model of Human-Animal Attachment

Humans and dogs share a unique form of emotional resonance shaped by parallel facultative carnivory, cooperative evolution, and overlapping affective architecture. This perspective develops the Affective Carnivore Hypothesis, a naturalistic model proposing that human-animal empathy emerges from the interaction between trophic physiology, endocannabinoid modulation, and psychoplastogen-driven neuroplasticity. Carnivore-aligned diets stabilise glucose, reduce inflammation, increase BDNF, and strengthen prefrontal-amygdala regulation, supporting emotional clarity and accurate perception of nonverbal cues. Cannabis further enhances empathic salience, limbic resonance, and interoceptive awareness. Natural psychoplastogens expand relational capacity via dendritic spine growth, synaptogenesis, and enhanced limbic-prefrontal integration. This model is grounded in phenomenology, drawing on lived relational evidence from Buddha, Zen, and Bubba, whose companionship revealed how diet, affective modulation, and neuroplasticity manifest in real-world human-animal attachment. Volunteering at The DogFather Animal Rescue provided behavioural validation, illustrating how stable affective architecture supports calm handling, attunement, and prosocial caregiving. This work proposes that empathy between parallel carnivores is not merely sentimental, but biological: an emergent property of shared evolution, shared physiology, and shared affective mechanisms.