If you’ve got a pet dog, you’ll know that the love for your fur baby is real. How many times have you taken a picture of them while they are sleeping? Or doing something cute with their paw? And don’t even get us started on how many times a day they appear on Instagram Stories.

This week, we learned that this is the most popular dog breed in Britain – and to continue the dog-related news updates, we have something to share that is pretty obvious. Humans love dogs more than the like other humans, and science says so.

We know what you’re thinking – we all knew this already. But now we have proof.

A study showed that people are more likely to donate to animal campaigns over human ones. A UK medical research charity set up two fake donation campaigns, one featuring a dog and the other featuring a person.

Both ads had the same plea, asking: ‘Would you give £5 to save Harrison from a slow, painful death?’ The dog and the human were both named ‘Harrison’, but one advert included an image of a dog, the other of an adult male.

Guess who made the most money through donations? Harrison the dog.

A second study showed that the only time a dog’s popularity was thrown into question was when its competition was a baby.  According to the NY Post, researchers provided university students with fake newspaper clippings of a baseball attack – one on a puppy, one on an older dog, one on a baby and one on an adult man. They were then assessed to see which animal or individual gained the most sympathy from the participants.

The researchers said: ‘Respondents were significantly less distressed when adult humans were victimised, in comparison with human babies, puppies and adult dogs.

‘Only relative to the infant victim did the adult dog receive lower scores of empathy.’