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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."
That socially overactive bimboslut who's flunking math class is actually much smarter than the super nerd in the corner who doesn't have any friends but aces all his math tests. Yes, that's right, being social and interacting with others is the new measure of smart!
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"
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
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.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.