It's because we Humans have holy dominion over all non-Human life on Earth:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
We pet them out of dominance, but also love and admiration. It's pretty cool to bond with a wild animal through touch too. We can't effectively communicate verbally to these animals that we mean them no harm, but if we can touch them gently in a way that assures them of our good intentions, then they can understand.
Nosferatjew 0 points 6 hours ago
It's because we Humans have holy dominion over all non-Human life on Earth:
We pet them out of dominance, but also love and admiration. It's pretty cool to bond with a wild animal through touch too. We can't effectively communicate verbally to these animals that we mean them no harm, but if we can touch them gently in a way that assures them of our good intentions, then they can understand.