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Dogs More Intelligent Than Cats?

Surely cats and dogs are like humans -some are cleverer than others. (Sorry if this has been pointed out before.)
 
I read today that dog’s brains have around 500 million neurons, twice as much as a cat’s at 250 million.
 
Dogs and Cats. Different. Nothing in common. No way of measuring one against the other, as one is a pack animal and the other a lone predator.

I might suggest there are some parallels between the typical woman and man. I leave it to you to decide which is which :hahazebs:

But both have their positives as well, and not all - men, women, cats, dogs - conform to the stereotypes.
 
I agree, you can't really compare the two. It's like trying to compare cats and dolphins or dogs and sparrowhawks. Just because they are two species we keep around us as domesticated animals, there's no real point of contact between the two.

Some people prefer a pet that does its own thing and some prefer a more reliant animal. Horses for courses (and let's not get into whether horses are more intelligent than cats or dogs...)
 
catseye said:
and let's not get into whether horses are more intelligent than cats or dogs.
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Are they? My intelligence estimation of hoofed animals would be: goats > cows > horses > deer > sheep.
Dogs are regularly put in the cows bracket, or vice versa.
:)
 
uair01 said:
Are they? My intelligence estimation of hoofed animals would be: goats > cows > horses > deer > sheep.
Dogs are regularly put in the cows bracket, or vice versa.
:)
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I've got limited experience of hoofed animals but I am surrounded by sheep where I live and they are rather more intelligent than i was led to believe.

I'd have thought both dogs and cats are necessarily brighter than any of the above, being hunter/killers by nature and then - for some dog breeds at least - deliberately bred for intelligence. I think the attributes that make cats a desirable pet also tend to result in breeding for intelligence, as does their solo nature. A pack can tolerate the odd dumb member, especially if it has other skills like being the fastest runner. A lone hunter can't be stupid.
 
Of course, herbivores do need to escape predators, which requires some quick thinking; even if you are mostly relying on speed, you have to decide when to pronk or change direction or whatever :)
 
uair01 said:
I read somewhere: An amateur biologist was walking rounds with his dog to look for relatively rare deaf adders/slow worms and his dog found some routes boring and others not.
https://www.bol.com/nl/nl/p/het-verlangen-naar-hazelworm/9200000010046977/
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That might explain why our dog will refuse to go a certain way on a particular day, but it seems to happen when I want to do a route we haven't done for a while. If I really made her go the way I wanted, (which would take a long time and lots of cajoling) then on the third or fourth day I wouldn't have any problems getting her to go that way now.
Also the routes we do consist of the same types of different terrain. It's not as if one is all fields and the other all pavement.

I wonder if she does it because she is worried we'll get lost and that I don't know where I'm going, or if it's some sort of dog OCD thing?
 
Granddaughter wanted to put nail varnish on the Pug:

pug1.png


He seems quite proud of it, going around the house showing off his tarty paws:

pug2.png


I don't think Puss would tolerate such indignity!
 
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Mooka said:
Bless him :chuckle: No I don’t think cats would somehow!
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They do have nail caps for cats so that they don't scratch something with their claws. I've seen this on "My Cat From Hell". The cat owner's gf was allergic and would have a bad skin reaction if she was scratched.

1668013171963.jpeg
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Granddaughter wanted to put nail varnish on the Pug:

View attachment 60615

He seems quite proud of it, going around the house showing off his tarty paws:
Click to expand...

He's the spitting image (from behind, at least!) of our own dog. Like yours, our pug tolerates quite a bit, though he does grumble loudly if his dignity is threatened...

Anyway, as far as intelligence goes, I thought that I'd read once that dogs couldn't interpret 2D images, such as on a TV, but that certainly not the case in our experience. Our pug won't take too much notice of the TV... until an animal appears on screen. Then he'll growl (which is comical, though I'd never tell him that!), and if the animal persists, he'll leap towards the TV, barking his little head off until the picture changes. I'm pretty sure he thinks that they are invading the house - in fact, he'll occasionally run from the TV to the back door, and into the garden if we let him, whereupon he'll patrol the borders for a minute or two, to check that the premises have been cleared of all animal life.

He's especially annoyed by birds and horses (the latter on the TV, naturally, we don't have stray horses in the garden), but it's only in his home environment. When we're out and about, he's about the most chilled-out animal you could meet.

Back to intelligence - not only does our dog recognise animals on TV, he can even spot cartoon creatures, which I think is quite clever. Some animations and caricatures are quite crude (and some cartoon animals wear clothes), but he knows immediately which are human (no problem) and which are animals (grumble, growl, bark...).
 
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