A real war has long been waged among cat and dog lovers which no group has won to date. Who is better, more intelligent – dogs, so well amenable to training, or cats, agile and cunning manipulators? BritainReviews provides you with information on this and others.
Just as iOS fans will fight to the death in a dispute with Android fans, cat and dog lovers will scream with foam at the mouth that their pets are more intelligent, and scientists from time to time, only throw up studies that defend one position, then another. Be that as it may, it’s time to settle this war of intellectual prowess between these two pets.
· The Bigger the Brain, the Smarter the Animal
The most obvious fact is that cats are comparatively smaller than an average dog. As evidenced on pet brands online reviews, it is clear that today both species are represented in variety, but historically among the domestic ones the canines still win.
A group of ten scientists from around the world conducted an interesting study, which, in theory, should have put an end to the eternal dispute between dog and cat lovers. They discovered that the cerebral cortex of dogs contains 530 million neurons, while in cats, this figure is half that — 250 million neurons.
· Cats Are Not Dumb
The greater the number of those same neurons in the brain region is responsible for thinking, the easier and faster the mammal learns, concludes its own mistakes, and remembers events. Therefore, the average dog with more neurons is better at solving complex problems than the average cat.
Although cats have lower EQ, their density of neurons per square millimeter of the cerebral cortex is significantly higher than that of the same dogs. They have the same training skills as dogs, but due to the specificity of the feline character and temperament, it is much more difficult to force them to learn something against their will; hence they fail the majority of their tests.
· Checkmate
Experiments carried out by scientists have proved that cats have three times better short-term memory; they are better at remembering all kinds of sequences and are better at analyzing situations than dogs. However, Hungarian scientists pointed out one important point: if a dog saw how a person solves a problem, it grabbed everything on the fly and immediately coped with a similar task itself.
This is the secret of canine genius — in interaction with humans. This skill is shown, for example, in the dog’s ability to read our gestures. Indeed each owner helped his dog find the ball, simply pointing out the direction in which it rolled away. None of the other animals (even our close relatives — chimpanzees) can interpret our gestures accurately.
The dog is generally extroverted, direct, transparent; it is an animal that has a spontaneous “emotional life”, whereas the cat is more subtle. It seems to “feel” the attitude of its owner, it “analyzes” it and acts accordingly. One is not more intelligent than the other except that each demonstrates its intelligence differently.
