Oxford Scientists Say Dogs Are Smarter Than Cats

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."

Comments

This is gonna be worse than Vi or Emacs

[wiredog]

I wonder what the "none of the above option" (MS Word equivalent) is gonna be?

Re:From the No-shit-sherlock department

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

More Social = Intelligent?

[SpryGuy]

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

[SpryGuy]

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 :-)

Dogs fit better with our model of intelligence

[Johnny5000]

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.