Oxford Scientists Say Dogs Are Smarter Than Cats 716
Velcroman1 writes "This again: scientists at Oxford University claim canines are smarter than felines. And the reason, according to the researchers, is that dogs are more social animals and therefore have bigger brains than the more solitary-inclined cats. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, charted the evolutionary history of various mammals' brains over 60 million years and found a link between the size of an animal's brain in relation to its body and how socially active it was."
This is gonna be worse than Vi or Emacs (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder what the "none of the above option" (MS Word equivalent) is gonna be?
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:4, Insightful)
Likewise, I wonder how well you'd have been able to train Einstein to jump over fences and run through tubes on your command.
Dogs are stupid lol.
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
...saying that dogs are smarter than cats is still a bit like arguing over the sprinting abilities of different species of garden snails. Depending on your personal preferences, both dogs and cats can be enjoyable pets, but no one gets either one for intellectual companionship.
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:3, Insightful)
>> Cats sort of get by just by being cute and not having to contribute anything else.
I think we could all name a few co-workers who employ this same strategy.
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:3, Insightful)
More Social = Intelligent? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article seems to imply that being more social implies greater intelligence. I agree there is "social intelligence"... but let's be honest here. The smartest people I know tend to be rather asocial or even anti-social. And some of the MOST social people I know are, well, kinda stupid :-) Think nerd vs party girl.
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:4, Insightful)
You can easily make robots and computers do what you want. Does that make them smarter too?
Likewise, I wonder how well you'd have been able to train Einstein to jump over fences and run through tubes on your command.
Dogs are stupid lol.
Why was this modded troll? Other than that last comment (okay, that was a bit inflammatory, and not really justified) this AC brings up a good point.
Ability or desire to follow orders <> intelligence
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:4, Insightful)
I've always considered it thusly:
If you take a human being of very low intelligence, and throw a stick and ask them to go get it for you, s/he'll trot off happily, pick it up, bring it back to you, and possibly drool in the process.
If you take a very intelligent human being, and throw a stick and ask them to go get it for you, s/he'll look at you like you're daft, and get on with doing something else.
Ergo: the difference between dogs and cats, and why I consider cats more intelligent :-)
Re:Cat are intelligent (Score:3, Insightful)
Dogs beg for attention and do whatever we want them to, cats simply don't care what we want and ignore us.
Anyhow, brain-size is not a good predictor of intelligence. You need good behavioral testing with food in boxes or on ledges or hanging from strings.
I saw how crows were tested for intelligence when they put food at the end of a string hanging from a stick, it had to figure out how to lift the string, hold it with it's foot while reaching down further and repeating. Many other types of birds couldn't figure it out.
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as intelligence is concerned, we have another cat and two dogs. They're each intelligent in their own way. And they're each really stupid in their own way. I typically think of intelligence as the ability to solve problems. This usually requires the capacity to learn new things. My cats don't learn new things very quickly, but my dogs acclimate in a matter of hours. Though, my girl dog would rather sit in the cold rain at the back door on the off chance someone might let her in than go get in her doghouse.
That's because dogs generally mind the lack of company far more than they do bad weather (mine still wants to go swimming even though the sea is starting to freeze). That behavior is consistent with the goals of a typical dog so I don't see how you could call it stupid.
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:3, Insightful)
Aside from mentioning it, I'll ignore the numerous grammatical errors while simultaneously implying that I'm misguided.
Cat's are not more intelligent. Theya re unable to be trained in ost cases, and even then ti's in the csinmplest of response.
So, because you can't force them to do what you want them to do, they're automatically stupid?
Cats are stupid, but since you are confusing there lack of intellegence with 'attitude'. Basically you think there independent and there for more intelligent.
Cats understand much of what humans say to them, they just don't care. Have you ever seen the way a cat looks at you when you give them a "command"? It's not a blank look, it's a "you gotta be kidding me" look.
Their independence DOES denote intelligence. They have the brainpower to determine they don't have to do what you want them to do, which is why conditioning doesn't work on a cat nearly as well as it does on a dog.
Stop anthropomorphizing animals.... they hate that~
I've done the exact opposite...in numerous posts, I've said that humans need to interact with cats as if they themselves are a cat. How is that, in any way, pushing human qualities on cats? If anything, it's pushing feline qualities on humans!
YOU EXPERIENCE counts fro diddley squat. It's nearly the worse kind on anecdote.
Of course. The fact that I've had 7 dogs and 4 cats in my 26 years of life means absolutely nothing when it comes to understanding how to communicate with both. Thanks for pointing that out.
Science shows Dogs are smarter. And yeah, I have owned both but I would llet my anecdote determine what's real
"Science"? So you're down to all-encompassing generalized labels now to support your meager attempt at an argument?
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it was also modded troll because it is a fallacy.
You don't train a computer, you program it to do extremely specific commands. It is not *learning* anything. Even AI programs where you supposedly "train" the computer to do what you want is still not quite accurate in my eyes.
According to the dictionary I just looked up, intelligence is "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills." This does not apply to your computer because it isn't acquiring or applying anything. Otherwise, you could say a rollercoaster is intelligent because it follows the set of instructions (rails) unerringly.
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:4, Insightful)
So your premise is that doing nothing requires more intelligence than performing a task? Makes one wonder what your definition of intelligence is.
Trainability requires intelligence, but it also requires motivation. Just because cats lack one of these doesn't mean they automatically have more of the other. I'm not claiming either side of the cat/dog intelligence debate but your reasoning is stupid.
Re:Dogs made man. Was Re:Maybe, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but so have cats. Cats, in fact, may have done as much for our species as dogs have. It's just been a lot less visible for much of our development.
Cats moved into our agricultural fields and our food storage areas on their own (they self-domesticated) to hunt the vermin that were eating out food supplies. Cats have literally been protecting our most precious resource, but they've been doing quietly and generally aloof from human interaction. Sure, you can argue that cats are doing it because that's where the prey are, but aren't dogs benefiting from domestication the same way?
And let's not forget that the vermin control has almost certainly done a lot to reduce the number of plagues humanity has endured. We remember the ones that the cats didn't stop, but there probably would have been more.
So not to dismiss the contribution of canines to human development, but I think I wouldn't dismiss cats' contributions either. They're certainly of a similar magnitude, I believe.
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:4, Insightful)
What's my motivation?
For bacon I might get you a stick.
For a paycheck I might flip your burgers, or design your nuclear plants. (depending on my intelligence and your paycheck)
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:4, Insightful)
I think an easier test of intelligence is to point at something. A dog will look where you're pointing. A cat just looks at your finger...
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:3, Insightful)
I think an easier test of intelligence is to point at something. A dog will look where you're pointing. A cat just looks at your finger...
Not true, at least for some cats, both my cats have learned how to interpret pointing. A classic trick is to pretend to throw something (ie a treat) both dogs and cats will skillfully anticipate the trajectory of object from the motion of your hand and pursue, with excitement. A test of intellegence may be if the cat or dog figures out it's been scammed quicker than the other does. From experience cats are sharp and natural skeptics once they've been tricked a couple of times. Dogs will fall for the same trick over and over, all day.
If I do throw the kitty treat, but it bounces away and the cat missed it, my cats will look around then look at me to try and get an impression of where it might have gone. Cats and dogs both make eye contact and can easily learn to understand pointing.
Sherlock just stepped in shit. (Score:4, Insightful)
Cats can be trained to do the same tricks dogs do [youtube.com]; plus others - witness their employment in many a show [youtube.com].
As an owner of many, many cats (currently eleven of them, 9 have their own 6000 cubic foot habitat, 2 others enjoy about 15000 cubic feet with the humans here) and many dogs, I would definitely say that there is a social difference, but that it is a difference we see on average -- there are exceptions for dogs, and exceptions for cats. I won't drop any anecdotes other than to say I've shared space with both gregarious cats and retiring dogs, though that is atypical.
I *will* say that the social difference generally inherent to the species affects the behavior a great deal, but isn't a direct reflection on intelligence. These animals naturally approach the world differently; they have different tool sets. Cats are stealthy, predators that kill from ambush using great precision and skill and this is evident in how they comport themselves in play, social settings and so forth. Dogs are pack animals, very comfortable in groups under almost any circumstance, and this is also evident in how they behave. Cats do what they please and this is a very successful strategy for them; dogs work well with others.
If you want to go by brain mass, well, lions and tigers, end of story. But I think that's pretty silly. It has to be about brain sophistication (ever try to teach a cow? But then look what a horse can learn...), and we don't really know how to measure that. There are numerous soft science tests/benchmarks, like an animal recognizing itself in a mirror (both dogs and cats can do this, to my certain knowledge) to demonstrate what psycho-babblers like to call a "sense of self", but again, they make certain assumptions that may very well not be valid - one thing I will also say with great certainty is that cats and dogs are not human-like; while both species may evidence every emotion we are familiar with (and again, I can vouch for this quite confidently), the balance of those emotions is different, the things that stimulate them are different, the durations are different, and the tendency to hold a "chip" is different, though absolutely present.
Honestly, I don't think this question can be settled - or even successfully approached - with the technology and knowledge we currently possess. Personally, I suspect both species are a lot smarter than we think they are; we just don't care about the same things, and we're probably not measuring even close to the right things. That's strictly one fellow's opinion based on a lot of co-habitation.
Dogs fit better with our model of intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
The question of whether a dog is smarter than a cat or vice versa is largely irrelevant. The human definitions of intelligence (and more specifically, our culture's definitions of intelligence) might match up closer with one animal or the other, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Dogs are much more in tune with human behavior than cats are. They're better at reading body language, better at communicating with us, etc. Their social structure isn't exactly like that of humans, but it's closer to ours than a cat's is.
Cats are better at being cats, dogs are better at being dogs. Dogs are probably slightly better at being humans, so we declare them to be smarter.
Cats can hunt in packs. Only most don't need to. (Score:3, Insightful)
So do cats [youtube.com], especially the slower, more powerful cats that are comparable in speed to wolves. Most species of cats are considerably more deadly on a per-animal basis than any wolf - faster, more athletic, sharper claws, ability to climb, night vision - and don't require pack strategies to succeed. Wolves use those strategies because one wolf isn't all that effective, as compared to a cat of equal size.
Compare a lion to a cheetah and you'll see exactly what I mean. If the cheetah decides you're dinner, you're dinner, that's the end of it [youtube.com] -- even if you're a gazelle. It's not so much a hunt as it is a murder. Lions will do very wolf-like surround and overwhelm, even to the point of co-operative pinning by limb and neck. [youtube.com] Domestic cats - the little guys we're familiar with - are more like cheetahs than lions; they're incredibly fast and agile compared to their prey, and generally don't need pack behavior to be successful.
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:3, Insightful)
As to whom is smarter... i guess it depends on the individual animal
Re:Dogs made man. Was Re:Maybe, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dogs fit better with our model of intelligence (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree. I think a good test would be to release a domesticated cat and dog into the wild somewhere. See which one survives without human intervention. My money is on the cat.
Re:Dogs made man. Was Re:Maybe, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
So one does not have to choose between development of sedentism and fixed human settlements and then the domestication of wolves on one hand and complete domestication wolves first before the development of sedentism. These co-evolved.
Re:Dogs made man. Was Re:Maybe, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Cats didn't stop the Black Death from massacring Europe because European Christians were demon-ridden idiots who thought that cats were servants of Satan, and should be killed.