Is there a limit on the number of friends a person can have? And what is the average number of friends of our dogs?

Today “The Wall Street Journal” published an interesting article on page B1 about the maximum number of network friends a person can have. While some people have thousands of “friends” on Facebook or MySpace, in 1983 Robin Dunbar, an Oxford anthropologist, calculated that 150 is the average number of our personal contacts. In an article published in 2003, he cited a range of 100 to 300 people as the average circle of friends. His point is that there is a natural limit to a friendship circle.

The author of the Wall Street article, Carl Bialik, suggests that technology, as it has already helped humans to surpass their physical limits on speed or strength, can enable us to boost the number of our friends by increasing our memory capacity.

Most of our friendships start offline, but through social networking websites it is much easier to keep in contact with a bunch of friends and acquaintances, especially if we are not able to see them very often. It is low cost and time saving. By sharing updates in our online profiles, we can keep in touch with multiple friends at the same time, without having to individually contact them.

And what about our dogs? In a survey SNIF Labs conducted with over 350 dog owners in the US, including readers of this blog, 60% of the respondents said that their dogs have one to five friends they interact with on a regular basis.

Dunbar pointed out that, because humans have a greater ability to use conscious thought and language, animals’ average circle of friends is much lower compared to ours. However, a dog’s social life is much dependent on its owner’s social habits, and that can push forward the limit of playmates a dog could have compared to wild animals.

The limit is that a dog can’t choose its own friends. A dog’s circle of friends is strictly dependent on his owner’s habits. If we go to the park only on Sunday morning, our Turbo will only play with dogs who go to the park at the same time. On the other hand, the relationship is reciprocal: it often happens that we make so many new friends through our dogs, and we keep in touch with these new people because our dog likes to play with their dog so much.

But this is not always easy. In the SNIF Labs survey, some dog owners pointed out how difficult it is to find or keep in touch with the perfect playmate for their dog. Even if Lucy randomly met Buddy once in a dog park, and they had the most fun time ever in years, the chances that they will meet again are not so high. Technology would then be helpful. So, why not keep in touch online with Buddy through a social networking tool for dogs, and be updated next time he is going to the nearby dog park?

By the way, our poor Turbo has 21 friends on his Facebook profile, and none of them is a dog. What a dog’s life!