Are Dogs Smarter Than Cats?

In my animal behavior class, I sometimes ask my 100 or so university students, who is smarter, dogs or cats?  Usually about 75 people raise their hands for dogs, and about 25 raise their hands for cats.

Now there seems to be a little bit of scientific confirmation for this position. A recent article in the journal Animal Cognition (Whitt et al. Domestic cats (Felis catus) do not show causal understanding in a string-pulling task, DOI 10.1007/s10071-009-0228-x), shows that cats don’t do very well in pulling baited strings toward them. When there is one string with a tasty morsel on the end, the cats do pretty well. But when there are two stings, with only one of them attached to the tasty morsel, or when the strings are intertwined, the cats can’t seem to figure it out and pull strings at random, even when they can see each of the strings and see which one is baited.

This study follows on the heels of another that was published in 2005 in Animal Cognition (Osthaus et al. 2005. Dogs (Canis familiaris) fail to show understanding of means-end connections in a string-pulling task, Animal Cognition  8: 37-47) That study showed that dogs can do marginally better at string pulling. When there were two parallel strings, one of which was baited with a tasty morsel, and the dogs could see the strings, most of them could figure out which string to pull. However, when the strings were crossed, so that the dog had to pull the string that was opposite to the location of the tasty morsel, the dogs couldn’t figure it out and pulled strings at random.

So does this mean that dogs are smarter than cats? In my animal behavior class, I talk about the leash and food experiment. It goes something like this. Tie a dog’s leash down to a stake, and then loop it over another stake in a V fashion. Then offer the dog a bowl of food in front of the dog. The catch is that the leash is not long enough for the dog to go straight to the food. To get there, the dog has to back up away from the food, go around the stake at the point of the V, and then go to the food. Fewer than 10 percent of dogs can figure it out. Most keep pulling on the leash, trying to go forward to get to the food. And how about cats? Almost any cat can solve this problem.

The bottom line in the food leash experiment is that dogs and cats have a different ecological and evolutionary history. Dogs evolved on the open plains, where they chased their prey. If they got stuck in a bush, their best option was to push ahead until they got unstuck. Cats evolved in places where they spent part of their time in caves. If they got stuck in a cave, their best option was to back up and go around an obstacle. Pushing ahead inside a cave that gets narrower and narrower is a recipe for death by natural selection.

The interpretation of the string experiments is not as straightforward as it seems. Cats like to play with strings. They also get bored easily. In the string experiment, the cats were given a new string to pull every 10 seconds. My cat would have lost interest in the first 20 seconds. And dogs don’t normally go around pulling strings to get their food (although looking cute, hungry  and appealing around feeding time could be considered pulling strings, heartstrings or guilt as the case may be).

So it may not be fair to conclude that these experiments tested the dogs’ or cats’ intelligence. To be fair to the authors of the studies, they recognize this as well, and list a series of possible confounding factors, including ecological and evolutionary differences between the two species.

The problem really is, how do you measure the intelligence of an animal? It’s not as easy as it seems on first glance.

And to that end, who really is smarter? When you consider that today in developed countries, many dogs and cats live a relative life of luxury, sleeping much of the day and being fed, petted, stroked, played with, talked to, and generally amused by their people, my answer is: they both are pretty smart. Many of us humans have to work to support our dogs and cats.

--Con Slobodchikoff

 

Comments

[Ben]

The problem with cat lovers is that they don't understand that felines are solitary rather than social like dogs so they end up projecting positive values of intelligence on an animal that can't understand empathy (so they call cats stoic or crafty or some such, intelligent masters because they tend to ignore humans as opposed to antisocial and incapable of understanding the family structure, etc. Dogs, OTOH, do understand social structures like family and their body language is very readable so when they do things we don't understand they call them stupid because they unconsciously expect them to closer approximate human intelligence.

[dog lover,cat hater]

oops im sorry i forgot that cats can use their usless little claws to fight back on dogs... give me a break.dogs are stronger

[dog lover,cat hater]

im writing this to dsg that wrote "cats are smarter than dogs no question" well let me tell you something,dogs obey their owners,and are used to track down criminals in the police, cats on the other hand do whatever they want and get away with it, so they NEVER learn. that narrows it down,BY FAR dogs are smarter!

p.s. dogs are definently stronger than cats. a simple little dog can kill a grown cat in a heart beat

[Hundehaftpflicht]

Thanks for sharing those excellent tips here, well done for sharing this information... Cheers.

[cat insurance]

cats aren't just smarter.
they're superior.
and they know they are.

[pulling on leash stop dog from your the puppy leashes]

.., dogs are smarter than cats.. with many proofs around.. there are more dogs walking around with their owner with their leash.. proves that dogs are more trainable than cats... lol.. :)

[dsg]

cats are smarter than dogs, no question

[cat health problems]

nice blog.. liked it very much....can someone give me some other related blog address..???ne ways appreciated..!!!

[Randall Johnson]

Cats are regarded as "exploitive captives", which is to say they are captive to humans but exploit this relationship to their benefit rather than suffer from it. That might be the underlying reason for asserting that "humans obey cats".

[Big John]

It's well documented that dogs obey humans, and humans obey cats. So, which is smarter? (Scientists aren't as clever as they think.)

[Randall Johnson]

Although my current household is dog dominant, cats have been actively included at various times; always females. I never asked myself which one was ‘smarter’ and I’ve come to the conclusion that this really isn’t a meaningful question. As pointed out in the post, cats and dogs have different evolutionary and ecological histories. Granted, dogs have a longer association with humans and they’re highly social animals, but each species does what it needs to do…and does it well. Both have developed unique ways of relating to us that involve communication, and pursuing this line of research would ultimately be more productive than trying to prove this one is more intelligent than that one. So instead of asking pointless questions about which one is ‘better’ or ‘smarter’, let’s appreciate the things they bring their relationships with us, enjoying the similarities and respecting the differences.