My Genius Hour Question

We looked up a bunch of ideas for Genius Hour in class today. After doing a bit of brainstorming with my classmates I decided to ask the question "how can students benefit from having a classroom pet (like a goldfish)?". I was very curious about if having a pet in the classroom could help teach students more about life and responsibilities. I started creating my proposal pitch about this question where I decided to tweak my question to: "how can kids benefit from having a pet?". I didn't want to limit my research to just a few students sharing a pet as a project in the classroom. I want to know if it's more beneficial for kids to grow up with a pet in their home or if its better for someone to grow up without a pet.

 Right now my thinking is that it is better for a kid to have some sort of companionship (especially only children), and to have responsibilities like taking care of a living creature. I would like to find out if there has been actual research done on this topic and to see what has already been found out. I hope to do a bit of my own research by interviewing kids who have pets, kids without, and the parents of each group to see what their opinions are. Personally, I had pets growing up and I found it extremely beneficial to my upbringing. I had fish, frogs, toads, and birds in my childhood home. I found that I became more responsible for something other than myself at an earlier age. Having pets also helped my parents explain the concept of life and death, which can be a very hard issue to explain to children. I'd like to see what other people's experiences are with pets, and what it's like to have other types of pets (dogs, cats, etc.). I'd also like to know how people who didn't grow up with a pet feel about their upbringing and if they feel like they missed out by not having a pet.