It seemed so cut and dry when last year, researchers at Vanderbilt University declared that yes, dogs were, in fact, smarter than cats. Their findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroanatomy, concluded that canines had significantly more cortical neurons in the brain than felines. These “little gray cells” are largely associated with “thinking, planning, and complex behavior—all considered hallmarks of intelligence.”
Specifically, the study found that dogs have about 530 million cortical neurons compared to 250 million for cats. (For what it’s worth, humans have 16 billion). Interestingly, the analysis also revealed that raccoons are among the brainiest of animals—possessing as many cortical neurons as a dog has in a brain the size of a cat’s.
That 2018 is the Year of the Dog, according to the Chinese zodiac, seemed extra fitting. Until a few days ago, when I came across an eye-catching headline from Scientific American: “Your Dog May Not Be a Genius, After All.”
The article references a recent study published in the journal Learning and Behavior, which makes exhaustive comparisons between dogs and a menagerie of other animals (including cats) to find that, while dogs are indeed unique, “there is no current case for canine exceptionalism.”
The findings include:
- In associative learning, dogs do not exhibit any unusual advantages over other animals.
- Dogs do have an excellent sense of smell, but similar abilities have been found in other animals, including pigs, horses, and cats.
- Physical cognition in dogs is not unique, and their performance is about the same as wolves, cats, bottlenose dolphins, and horses.
- In spatial tasks, dogs are not more exceptional than other animals.
Still, one area where canines do outperform felines is taste, according to the research. Unlike cats, dogs are able to respond to sweetness, thanks to their different genetic structure.
Whereas these new findings may be like catnip to feline fanatics, they don’t necessarily prove anything—other than the fact that “facts” won’t easily determine the hierarchy of animal intelligence.
Brian Hare, the founder, and director of Duke University’s Canine Cognition Center warns of applying human-centric standards on animals:
“Asking which species is smarter is like asking if a hammer is a better tool than a screwdriver… Each tool is designed for a specific problem, so of course, it depends on the problem we are trying to solve.”
SOURCE: PHYCOLOGY TODAY