The age-old argument: Who’s smarter cats or dogs? Obviously, dogs are smarter. Right? Science says not so fast.
A study published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroanatomy in December 2017 tallied up the amount of cortical neurons in the brains of eight different carnivorous animals. Neurons are cells that receive, process, and transmit information through electrical and chemical signals. The more neurons, the more resources to process information and thus make better decisions.
Dogs DESTROYED cats in the total amount of neurons. A golden retriever has 627 million neurons whereas cats have a measly 250 million neurons. A smaller mixed breed dog has 429 million. For comparison, humans have an average of about 16 billion neurons and orangutans and gorillas have about eight to nine billion.
“I believe the absolute number of neurons an animal has, especially in the cerebral cortex, determines the richness of their internal mental state and their ability to predict what is about to happen in their environment based on past experience,” neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel from Vanderbilt University said. “Our findings mean to me that dogs have the biological capability of doing much more complex and flexible things with their lives than cats can.”
However, a new study finds that dogs might not be utilizing these neurons in a way that actually makes them smarter and that other factors such as brain size and structural complexity are more important to gauge intelligence. Different species are intelligent in different ways.
According to a new study by psychologists from the University of Exeter and Canterbury Christ Church University, dogs’ level of intellect is “unexceptional.” MY DOG IS EXCEPTIONAL!!! I DON’T CARE WHAT THESE MONSTERS SAY!!!
Can cats do this?
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Researchers conducted a meta-analysis of over 300 studies on animal intelligence and discovered that dogs’ smartness has been overrated.
Researchers zeroed in on five key areas: sensory cognition, physical cognition, spatial cognition, social cognition, and self-awareness. Then compared animals such as dogs, cats, chimpanzees, and wolves.
You ever see two cats do this?
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“During our work it seemed to us that many studies in dog cognition research set out to ‘prove’ how clever dogs are,” said psychologist Stephen Lea of the University of Exeter. “They are often compared to chimpanzees and whenever dogs ‘win’, this gets added to their reputation as something exceptional. Yet in each and every case we found other valid comparison species that do at least as well as dogs do in those tasks.”
In comparable tests between the different species “dog cognition does not look exceptional.” Fuck this study. My corgi Sadie is exceptional and no hoity-toity scientist can tell me otherwise.
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