Study Finds Dogs Are Brainier Than Cats (vanderbilt.edu)

Science_afficionado writes: Are you a cat lover? A dog lover? If so, you may be interested in the first scientific study to actually count the number of cortical neurons in the brains of a number of carnivores, including cats and dogs. Bottom line: Dogs have about twice as many of these "little grey cells" as cats. These "little gray cells" are associated with thinking, planning and complex behavior. The study found that dogs have about 530 million cortical neurons while cats have about 250 million. (For comparison, the human brain has 16 billion.) Another interesting discovery was that carnivores have about the same ratio of neurons to brain size as that of herbivores, "suggesting that there is just as much evolutionary pressure on the herbivores to develop the brain power to escape from predators as there is on carnivores to catch them," reports Vanderbilt University. "The study's findings also challenge the prevailing view that domesticated animals have smaller brains than their wild cousins. The ratios of brain size to body weight of the domestic species they analyzed -- ferret, cat and dog -- did not scale in a significantly different manner from those of their wild relatives -- mongoose, raccoon, hyena, lion and brown bear."

The results of the study are described in a paper titled "Dogs have the most neurons, though not the largest brain: Trade-off between body mass and number of neurons in the cerebral cortex of large carnivoran species" accepted for publication in the open access journal Frontiers in Neuroanatomy.

Comments

I doubt it

[nospam007]

My dog runs 200 times to fetch a stick I throw, my cat gives me the 'fuck you' look the very first time and goes for a nap.

Re:There's a reason we don't train Cats

[goose-incarnated]

they can't be trained because they're rather stupid

How well can you be trained ? Would you be able to obey simple commands such as sitting on the ground, or fetching a ball, in return for being told you're such a good boy ?

Ever seen people play sports? You're disproving your own point here.