Generally speaking, if a cat and a dog are kept at home, the status of the cat is relatively high. Whether it is to seize the sleeping place, or who eats first when eating, or who is attacking and who is suffering when playing, obviously the cat has the initiative. Is the cat really smarter than the dog?
1. Is a big head smart?
Scientific argument stresses data, but what data is appropriate? How to process the data? The accepted way to compare intelligence quotient of different species is to compare the brain. If you only consider the quality of the brain, there is no doubt that dogs have heavier brains, because dogs are bigger than cats.
But people can't take advantage of this. After all, the biggest whale has the heaviest brain in the world. So, new methods emerged, and people began to calculate the ratio of brain weight to body weight. In this way, the brain weight to body weight ratio of cats was 0.9% and that of dogs was 1.2%. It still looks like the dog has the advantage? However, does brain weight really mean high IQ? Maybe it's just the high water content? The most important part of the brain is the cerebral cortex, which involves the functions of perception, information processing, reasoning and judgment. If we consider the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex of cats is 300 million, while that of dogs is 160 million. Cats are almost twice as many as dogs.
Does that mean cats are smarter than dogs? Obviously not. Who is smarter? Such a rigorous judgment can not only look at the data, but also speak with facts.
2. Is socialization smart?
The higher the degree of humanization, the higher the degree of socialization. According to this hypothesis, the cat's inference is: "not only are dogs smarter than cats, but the IQ gap between them is getting bigger and bigger."
In 1998, there was a study focusing on the climax of dog intelligence. In front of the experimenter were two cups, one with a reward and one empty. The researchers found that dogs could understand people's gestures - to which cup a person pointed, the dog would choose the corresponding cup and get a reward. The dog passed the test successfully, but the popular chimpanzees failed, choosing only the cup at random and ignoring human instructions. So what about cats? First of all, the cat owner said, "where is the laboratory? I'm not going! " The cat can't stand the experiment in a strange environment, so the experimenter has to go to the cat owner's home to carry out the experiment. Secondly, a considerable number of cats did not cooperate with the experiment at all. In the end, cats who were willing to participate in the experiment performed almost as well as dogs. This shows that cats, like dogs, can understand the intention of their owners and have primary thinking ability. It's just that sometimes the cat doesn't want to talk to you.
The level of socialization can only show that the social structure of cats and dogs is different. Dogs are willing to cooperate with people's instructions and will actively please people, so they perform better in IQ tests. And the cat said, does IQ test have anything to do with me?
3. Can a cat count?
There are hundreds of papers on dog intelligence, but few on cats. Although the cat doesn't care about its IQ, some people do.
The world's first-class animal cognitive scientists have painstakingly published a paper and published the roaring style: "we have done a study on cats, which has fed me up!" After all, cats often do things that surprise the experimenters. They're likely to go crazy in unfamiliar environments, and their attention is not at all experimental. You put the cat in the maze, and the next scene is likely to be that the cat walks into a dead end and sits down and starts licking his hair and wiping his face. You put food in front of the cat's eye and it doesn't even look at it, let alone try to grab it.
However, some people have published papers on the intelligence quotient of cats. Some people try to test whether cats can count. The method is very simple. One side is three dots plus a plate of food, and the other side is two dots plus an empty plate. Then they can see whether the subjects can find the difference between three dots and two dots after training. This experiment is quite simple. Monkeys, birds and even fish can pass it, but cats can't. The biggest problem is that cats don't choose either. Even cats that have successfully completed the experiment have strange concerns - for example, they may be more interested in the size of dots than the number of dots.
People who have done this experiment have to cautiously conclude that counting is not so important for cats, after all, cats don't need to learn to count in the wild.
4. Can cats be domesticated?
In another experiment, cats and dogs needed to remove food from under the obstacle. In the first stage of the experiment, both the cat and the dog were able to complete the task successfully. In the next stage, the experimenters did their hands and feet, and the food was tied to the legs of the chair and couldn't be taken out. After trying for a while, the dog gave up the experiment and asked the owner for help. The cat, on the other hand, seldom pays attention to its owner, but always tries to accomplish this impossible task.
It may be that cats and dogs are not domesticated at the same level. After all, dogs have been with humans for 30000 years, while cats have been domesticated for less than 10000 years. The common result of long-term cooperation with human beings is that dogs become more and more socialized and rely more and more on human beings. Therefore, when confronted with a problem, the dog's first reaction is to ask for help, but the cat will not.
In fact, as long as the method is appropriate, cats can also train like dogs, learn to sit down, stand, wave their paws, and go to the toilet.
At the end of the 19th century, some people even used cats to send letters. The 37 cats who participated in sending letters delivered the letters to the designated places within 24 hours. Maybe we'll have a chance to meet the cat courier in the future?
5. A cat is not necessarily cleverer than a dog
Studies on the intelligence quotient of cats and dogs are inconclusive and may never come to fruition. Cats may not be smarter than dogs, but researchers who are "fussy" will study people who love cats or dogs. The study surveyed 600 college students and found that 11% of them like cats, 60% like dogs, and the rest like both or neither. The study found that dog lovers were more active, outgoing and more likely to follow the rules, while cat lovers were more introverted, sensitive, open-minded and more likely to break the rules. People choose their favorite pets according to their personality!
