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."
From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:2, Informative)
Anyone who's trained a dog, or attempted to train a cat, could tell you this.
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)
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
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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 coul
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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."
But your fallacy is that you presume intelligence is the only factor in trainability. If I "trained" two people how to jump off a cliff ("you need to get a really good running start, like this..."), and one of them did it but the other refused, is the one who jumped more intelligent?
Maybe cats can't be trained because they don't find it in their best interest. (And I say this as a dog lover who can't stand cats.)
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...
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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 tr
Re:Look at Wild Ancestors (Score:4, Interesting)
Clearly someone failed to pay attention to the Discovery Channel when shows about big cats was on. Big cats are not 100% solitary hunters. Many of them *do* hunt in packs, in coordination, and much better than any dogs. Most wild dogs just run the prey down. Big cats set traps and herd prey to other waiting members of the pack. I'd say the win goes pretty solidly to the big cats on who's more intelligent.
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I have a friend who worked for a while on a lion breeding programme in Zimbabwe, reintroducing captive-bred animals to the wild. He's got no end of hair-raising anecdotes about the scrapes that the lions in his charge got him into as they learned to hunt and so on. But he's very lucky in that during his time there he seemed to be a magnet for wild dogs. They're pretty rare, and most people never get to see them, but he was fortunate enough to have several encounters. He says that you knew when the wild
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.
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As to whom is smarter... i guess it depends on the individual animal
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Right. I have both. My dogs are more easily trained, but my cats seem to figure out stuff by themselves. Dogs are baffled by things like cupboard doors, but most cats solve the problem fairly quickly.
But squirrels and birds are able to solve very complex obstacle courses themselves. In this sort of thinking, they put dogs to shame.
http://www.maniacworld.com/squirrel-obstacle-course.html [maniacworld.com]
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 w
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you're confused here.
When you attempt to train a dog, conditioning comes into play. The dog knows it will get rewarded if it does what it's told, and as such becomes trained. You train a dog similar to how you train a human, through a reward system.
When you attempt to train a cat, attitude comes into play. The cat doesn't care what you tell it to do, because it's a cat. Bribary doesn't work...you have to train a cat the way a mother cat would train her kittens. If you can read their body language (and learn how to physically communicate without the use of a tail), you can communicate with them on a fairly deep level.
I've had pets my whole life, both cats and dogs. In my own experience, dogs make for better companions, but cats are more intelligent.
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:4, Insightful)
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>> 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.
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Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:5, Informative)
Hey. Catching and eating mice around your grain stockpile has, historically, been a really big deal. (Now, cats in America in 2010, that's a different story.)
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> Now, cats in America in 2010, that's a different story.
Farm cats still work for a living. They're more independent contractors than employees, though.
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That may be the case in urban families, but cats do have a role. The reason they were domesticated in the first place was to combat rodents. The only thing they received in return was shelter from weather and predators. Through the course of our joined evolution they've moved into our homes and become the lazy bastards they are today.
One of my cats was actually born in a horse barn where he learned to be a proper cat. When he came to live with me he provided an endless supply of mice, squirrels, birds, and
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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:5, Interesting)
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:4, Interesting)
Cats are fairly trainable. The big disconnect comes from requiring a different approach than one uses with dogs. For whatever reason, many people seem unable to read a cat's body language; which is an absolutely must. While I do agree, in general, dogs are smarter than cats, both have fairly large vocabularies to which they can comprehend and attempt to emote.
Remember, on average, dog = three year old human. A cat = two year old human.
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You imply the OP's claim that dogs are smarter than cats is wrong. To prove it, you describe how dog training works, go so far as to compare dogs to humans, offer no evidence that a cat can be trained, and
I don't follow.
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My point was that a cat doesn't really have to be trained...they just need to be interacted with in a different way than dogs.
Cats are "pre-trained" by instinct and pack mentality. All you have to do is communicate with them on that basis (mostly through physical cues, rather than aural), and you'll be able to have things running smoothly.
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: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:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:4, Funny)
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)
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I refute it thus. [youtube.com]
Cats chase potential prey animals like lunatics, even when they've already established that they're not actually prey. Dogs engage in recreational activities involving sticks. Which sounds like an intelligent species?
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Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:5, Funny)
All my cats respond to voice and gesture commands, easily.
That's easy when your commands are "sit still," "nap," "blow me off," and "lick your ass"
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't seen any vibrant displays of intelligence from either cats or dogs, and I've owned many of both as you have.
My current cat (I've had several some years ago) learned how to open doors just by watching humans do it, with no training involved (we would have preferred if she never learned that). She also discovered on her own how to open the drawer under the fishtank in order to have a good place where she can sit looking at the fishes.
But after several months she haven't figured out that no matter how hard she tries, she can't catch the fishes through the glass, so there's that...
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I have a cat who figured out the laser pointer. When I try to use it, she just stares at my hand with a look that says, "seriously?"
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:5, Interesting)
Well how about this. When my cat wants to go outside, usually in the evening, he scratches on the (glass) door at the back of the house and then stares at me. Simple enough so far, he scratches the door, I open it. However, when I'm upstairs and I can't see him doing it, he will come up and scratch on any piece of glass, a window or a mirror. It seems like it went from 'let me through this door' to 'when I scratch on glass it means I want to go outside', a bit more complex concept.
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But how do you know she's actually trying to catch the fishes?
I've seen humans tap the glass of fish tanks, and most of them certainly know they can't catch the fish through the glass, nor do they intend to break the glass.
Many fish don't appear to know that though and so _respond_ accordingly. And that might be enough for your cat. I doubt someone playing a game is trying to catch something inside an iPad ;).
As for whether cats or dogs are smarter, I don't really care. Most don't seem smart enough to be given that much responsibility anyway.
What concerns me are transhumans/posthumans. When scientists start creating human hybrids or very intelligent creatures. At what point do you consider an entity "human", as it it gets the rights, privileges AND responsibilities of a human being?
If society is not ready to answer that question in the near future, then scientists shouldn't be forcing the issue onto society by researching into such directions. It would just lead to more evil being inflicted. Augmenting humans is a different thing from creating more humanlike entities.
If we are creating creatures with near human intelligence (or even smarter) for the purpose of enslaving them, is that really such a good thing? If we are not going to enslave them, what the heck are we doing - we haven't even solved the racism problem yet.
When your pets get really smart, you better hope they treat you nicely, whether because they find you cute and adorable, or something... Maybe out of our good example (haha).
hmmm, interesting, I think your post is a really good example of why you should not take acid (or whatever) and then post to slashdot.
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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 the
Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department (Score:5, Interesting)
I read some of your earlier posts regarding how cats look at you with a, "I don't care," look in their eyes. I know what kind of look you are talking about as I've raised my own cats before. However, I do want to point out that some of that attitude you are reading may very well be anthropomorphizing your cat as has been pointed out earlier. I used to think cats had attitude, but then I met a few cats raised on ranches and farms which very clearly did not. I think the only reason modern house cats appear to have attitude is because they have not been given a clear role to perform in their homes. So they tend to stare at their owners in expectation. We just see the, "I don't care," theme because of their facial structure which resembles that attitude in the faces of human beings who have made their position clear in the past.
For cats that have been trained on a ranch or at a farm (to be mousers, or whatever), they never show you an "I don't care," attitude. They act very similarly to a dog in that they treat you as the owner and master and they obey your commands. I think the modern idea that cats have attitude just stems from the prevalence of spoiling of cats by modern families. That's just my two cents though.
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Here is a list of a things a cat enjoys:
- Sleeping
- Eating
- Hunting/exploring/monitoring its territory
- Sunbathing
You won't find fetching a stick or licking your hand on that list because cats have little to no interest in that. I have seen some t
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She's also learned to open doors, as long as she can reach the handle. She's been trying to have a go at the kitchen sink tap, but that handle is a bit too hard to lift for her. It just has to "be relevant to her interests", which seems reasonable if you remove a lot of the social context that goes into dog training.
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One of our cats plays fetch with Q-tips and has learned to jump through this tube like thing we got for them to play in when I hold it up in the air. He taught himself these tricks, no training required. All three of them recognize quite a few words of English even when said in a monotone and with no body language involved.
Trainability also != intelligence.
Having grown up with both dogs and cats I'm pretty sure they are both fairly smart species, but I really do think cats are the smarter of the two. You
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Ever try to train your wife? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Ever try to train your wife? (Score:4, Funny)
I've found that in this case, direct cash payments work best.
Slashdot Crowd, Rebel! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Slashdot Crowd, Rebel! (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed. By this logic, Facebook and Twitter users are the cream of the intellectual crop.
I weep for mankind...
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If you think spending all day on Facebook makes you LESS solitary then you might have just supported the theory posed in the summary.
=Smidge=
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Point taken. 10,000 'friends' on FB really doesn't translate to 'real life' all that well...
Okay, so how about the socialites and constant club-hoppers? Is Paris Hilton a better example for you?
I weep...but keep polishing my shotgun.
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Okay, so where do I vote for that guy?? ~
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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?
That only proves the opposite point (Score:2)
My cat groks Unix (Score:2)
Obviously brain size establishes intelligence (Score:2)
Because whales and elephants rule the planet.
When the cat can't get to it's litter box for some reason, it holds it's bowels until it can. When the dog can't get outside because nobody is home to open the door, it craps on the floor. I'll take the dumb cat every time and twice on Sunday.
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Because whales and elephants rule the planet.
Notice how, even in the summary, it says brain size in relation to body size. Elephants and whales may have huge brains, but their bodies are much larger.
When the cat can't get to it's litter box for some reason, it holds it's bowels until it can. When the dog can't get outside because nobody is home to open the door, it craps on the floor. I'll take the dumb cat every time and twice on Sunday.
Cats learn to use litter boxes. Dogs learn to hold it in until someone shows up to let them out. If your dog is crapping all over the house, I'd say you did a terrible job of training it.
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I know TFS gets that wrong at the start, but not at the end. You should at least try to read that far if you can't be botherd with RTFA
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Then you have the wrong dog. Our dog, a German Shepherd has an escalating array of "I need the loo" signs.
* First he'll just stare at you, and if you say "Show me what you want" he'll lead you to the front door. ('Show me what you want' will also lead you to bread (hungry), a piece of furniture (usually a toy has gotten stuck beneath it), a toy (he wishes to play) or anything that gives The Human a clue as to what he wants)
* Then he'll whine and wander between you and the door
* After he'll pat you with his
Tell that to the cat... (Score:2)
Obligitory (Score:2)
Dogs have masters.
Cats have staff.
Dogs are man's best friend (Score:2)
smarter who? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Dogs made man. Was Re:Maybe, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anatomically modern human beings appeared on the scene 250,000 years ago. But their skulls were the "robust" type. But starting from 75,000 years ago, it started becoming "gracile" or thinner and less robust. It is an indication of reduction of violence and warfare among the various bands of hunter gatherers. Humans were developing the social skills to get along with extended families. But still they were extremely hostile to strangers. All the remnant hunter gatherer societies are marked by incessant warfare with their neighbors and extreme hostility. The Yamamono, the Fore, the Andamanese, the Koi-san all fight all the time and they fight to kill. With ambush imminent at any time and raids being very common, they could not develop sedentism, living in one place. They have to be constantly on the move.
But 25,000 years ago in central Asia, near Mongolia, Man finally found a night watchman. The dogs. They got the sentry duty. Once the dogs developed a symbiotic relationship with humans, we were able to settle down and live in one place. That is how we observed the connection between dropped seeds and the plants growing out of it. Just 15000 years later we had domesticated the einkorn wheat in the Fertile Crescent. Dog is the species that co-evolved with humans, and they are probably the only species that can follow the eye-movement of human beings and pointing by index finger by human beings and "understand" they need to look there. Compared to their wolf ancestors, dogs are orders of magnitude more sociable. Shows how much they have evolved in such a short period of 25000 years.
In short, dogs made man, what he is today.
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.
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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.
Dogs' conceptualization ability (Score:4, Interesting)
Just to add my little bit - I regularly observed my dog (a miniature poodle, now passed on - I acquired him by chance, and came to appreciate poodles - they're good dogs!) to get an idea of what his cognitive abilities were. Among other things, I realized one ability that we tend to take for granted. When out walking on a leash (usually one of those extending leashes), he was very good about always going between me and obstacles such as trees. In fact when heading on his own path, he would realize he was about to go on the wrong side of a tree or post, and backtrack to where he could go between, keeping the leash from wrapping around the object. He did not do this when he was off the leash.
This behavior requires some interesting cognitive ability - he had to understand and act on the concept of 'betweenness', in addition to understanding the difference between the leashed state and the unleashed state.
I would like to see more research done on related subjects of spatial reasoning as well as relational reasoning. I think that evaluating the ability to hold and act on such abstract concepts could give us a valuable insight into the intelligence of critters as well as ourselves. We already know that dogs have picked up some very good relational reasoning - they're better at reading our social cues than we are. (Although I have to say some dogs are not so gifted - my daughter's dog is pretty clueless, but he's young so we'll see.)
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My Boston Terrier, who is my running companion, is very good at anticipating up coming trees or sign posts and figures it out and knows if she is leashed or not. She didn't figure this out until was a over a year old.
However the event that still has me scratching my head was last winter when my wife and I went hiking in the woods with our dog. We leave our dog off leash.on these hikes as she usually stays within 10 to 15 yards. We were back 2.5-miles per my GPS through thick trees and no trail when she disa
Re:Dogs made man. Was Re:Maybe, but... (Score:4, Funny)
In short, dogs made man, what he is today.
What, not able to use commas properly?
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So this means... (Score:5, Funny)
Social is the old smart ... (Score:3, Interesting)
... being social and interacting with others is the new measure of smart ...
Actually social is the old smart. They've found that the part of the brain used for reading is also the part of the brain that recognizes faces, facial expressions and body language. We have new skills with respect to reading, math and science but the same old brain. Devoting brain cells to these new activities has to take brain cells away from something else. Maybe the socially challenged nerd stereotype has a basis in science. ;-)
Dogs are smarter, huh (Score:2)
I will be sure to remind my dogs of this the next time I catch them eating shit off the ground. Literally, eating random dog shit, right off the ground. If you want to get into a pissing match over which animal is dumber, the one that excitedly eats dog shit off the ground or the one that licks itself until it's throat fills with hair, you go right ahead. Just don't throw the word "smarter" in there expecting it to mean something.
So dogs are more social? (Score:4, Funny)
Then I guess cats are better at math.
And the counterexample is... (Score:2)
"The Situation"
Really, social ability is one thing, brain size is another, intelligence is another, there may be a correlation but the key word is "your mileage may vary"
Otherwise whales and dolphins would be much more smarter than humans.
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.
I guess they've never had a pet cat (Score:4, Interesting)
So doing what you're told is now proof of intelligence? Does not compute.
As for anecdotal evidence, one of my parents' three cats used to trick the neighbour's dog into an ambush where the other two would pounce and beat the crap out of it. Somehow I think that's a better example of intelligence than fetching a stick after a human throws it away.
I'd say rats are smarter than cats. (Score:4, Interesting)
I worked with rats for a while in my research, and I thought it was very striking how smart a relaxed rat is. What's immediately apparent is how varied their personalities are, and how aware they are of their environment. They take an intense interest in the people around them, and unlike cats aren't easily distracted from they are engaged in. Cats seem to have their bodies hard-wired into the part of their optic system that deals with motion. No matter what a cat is doing all you have to do is make a sudden darting motion to override everything and have them staring, hypnotised, at the moving object. Rats react more like dogs, where they seem to ponder the event rather than react immediately to it.
Another cool thing is how rats behave in research. Decades ago, research in rats involved having a big writhing mass of savagely wild animals in a cage, which were picked out with long tongs to be manhandled around for tests. This was the same with dogs and apes, one researcher told me that they used to have an ape research centre in Sweden where it took a half dozen lab techs to hold down a screaming chimp to get weighted every few days (with obviously shitty results). They eventually realised how awful and unnecessary this was and instead trained the chimps to go stand on a scale in return for a banana (research on primates is now illegal in Sweden). It worked equally well with dogs, who were given treats after blood samples were taken, so they eventually would run to their cage doors and offer a paw out in order to give a blood sample in exchange for a treat.
When we took blood samples from the rats, they would lay quietly in our arms and stretch out their back legs, which we would shave and then prick with a needle. The lab techs had been training them for weeks to do this, by stretching out their legs, pinching them slightly and then giving them strawberry jam or chocolate spread as a reward. (Even that reward aspect was interesting, the rats had their own unique preferences between strawberry and chocolate).
This is exactly what cats want you to think. (Score:5, Funny)
They love lulling us into a false sense of security.
This study is bogus! (Score:5, Funny)
I have a dog. He likes to eat shit. When he was younger, he used to eat his own shit until there was enough negative reinforcement to break the disgusting habit. My neighbor's dogs used to try and raid the litterbox too, so it's not a behavior unique to my own lovable retard.
I also have two cats. Neither of them eat shit. Q.E.D.
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Well, using your two data points coupled with the results of this study, I can only come to one conclusion -- eating shit makes you smarter!
Cats invented humans (Score:3, Funny)
Broca's "big brain" fallacy all over again. (Score:5, Funny)
I thought phrenology was thoroughly out of fashion since Gould debunked Morton and Broca in "the Mismeasure of Man".
But who cares about that. The Internet is made of cats! On with the cat stories!
Our eight-year-old ginger tabby taught himself to use the toilet. I'm not kidding.
I was wondering why I kept finding the toilet unflushed, and little splashes on the rim. The kids claimed it wasn't them, but I didn't really believe them.
Then one day I walk in, and there's the cat sitting on the toilet. He looks up at me with a perfect "Excuse me, can a guy get some privacy around here" expression on his face and keeps right on peeing.
My dog taught herself to dig up cat feces and eat them.
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The Internet is made of cats!
Then there might be some hope for the future...
As to cats and their toilet habits, it may or may not be a comment on them that they almost universally prefer at least a little privacy when they are performing their ablutions.
They're almost... human... in that respect; excepting a considerable amount of paranoia, the sort that still has the human race segregating bathrooms according to gender, anyway ;)
I have a
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.
Re:Cats are intelligent (Score:2)
Unlike myself who can't even get a title grammatically correct!!
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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
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It's very dependent on the breed. I have a friend whose dog does this.
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I've never met a cat that could respond to its name, let alone do tasks as complex as dogs.
That's because people tend to communicate with cats the same way they communicate with dogs, which just plain doesn't work. If you communicate with a cat the way other cats do (primarily through physical rather than aural communication), it works quite well.
Body language makes up 80-90% of communication between cats, whereas with dogs this is closer to 40-60%.*
*Numbers taken from my own experience.
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We communicate with dogs the way w communicate with intelligent creatures.
By giving them biscuits when they do what you tell them to do? Sounds more like oppression to me.
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The reason you don't see helper cats is that cats are too smart to be exploited like that. Cats have helper humans.
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Dogs have owners. Cats have staff.
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It varies quite a bit how much they're willing to do, but my parents did get a few "presents" from their pet cat, including a not quite dead squirrel that somehow he'd managed to
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You're obviously a dog person. Almost every dog person I've met actively hated cats; I think it's very sad. Most cat people are neutral at worst on dogs or actually, gasp, like them too. I'm an animal person, I don't see the need to side with one particular type.
I grew up with two very loving and intelligent shepherds, farm dogs, and loved spending time with them. I also grew up with a bunch of cats we tamed, basically live mouse traps that just showed up one day, and loved spending time with them just
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There's just three reasons why lions aren't appropriate pets, size, habitat requirements and instinct. While they're not malicious in most cases, they do still have a strong degree of instinct left. Sort of like tigers, which is part of what happened during that incident involving Roy. I doubt the animal really meant to hurt him, but lacked the processes to avoid it.
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To lull us into a false sense of safety.
Exactly!
Please, for Humanities sake, read this guide that details How to Tell if Your Cat is Planning to Kill You [catswhothrowupgrass.com].