DOGS ARE NOT SUPER SMART

                                                         

There has been for many years a long-simmering dispute over whether dogs are smarter than cats. A recent study published in the journal Learning & Behavior suggesting that dogs are no more exceptional than other animals when it comes to canniness and intelligence.

That news is sure to ignite debates among dog owners and scientists who study canine behavior. The authors reviewed existing studies and data on animal cognition and found that while dogs are smart and trainable, they are not “super smart,” despite what most dog owners will tell you.

The idea for the study came about when Stephen Lea, an emeritus professor in the psychology department at the University of Exeter in Britain, was editor of Animal Cognition, a journal that seeks to explain cognition among humans and animals in the context of evolution. Dog research, he said in an interview last week, was quite popular in the 1990s and continues to be so.

He also said, “I was getting a number of papers showing how remarkable the things were that dogs could do.  When it came to other animals, though, scientific studies on intelligence barely trickled in, despite evidence to suggest that horses, chimpanzees and cats had tricks of their own. Almost everything a dog claimed to do, other animals could do also. It made me quite wary that dogs were special.”

Of course,  there is Chaser, a Border collie from Spartanburg, South Carolina   who was trained to understand 1,022 nouns. His owner, John Pilley, a scientist who studied canine cognition, recently died. Before his dogthat was a Border collie named Rico who learned to recognize the names of 200 items. But beyond those examples, Dr. Lea wondered: Had dog lovers and scientists, for that matte) imbued their pets with extraordinary capabilities they did not normally possess?

(Perhaps that explains the plot of the 1996 feel-good animal buddy movie Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco, featuring the odyssey of Shadow, a golden retriever; Sassy, a Himalayan cat; and Chance, an American bulldog.

At the same time, domesticated animals share similar traits with their canine cohorts. Horses, like dogs, perform elaborate tasks. And cats? They have more in common with dogs than one might think. Still, he said, “It is much easier to show intelligence in dogs because they like to be trained.” Dogs, Dr. Lea added, “are not smarter than they are supposed to be, given what they are.”

Small babies can be rained to smile and cry on cue qhwn they play small parts in movies but that doesn’                              

Almost everything a dog claimed to do, other animals could do too,” said Stephen Lea, a professor who recently completed a study on canine intelligence.

Mieshelle Nagelschneider, a cat behaviorist said, Many persons who are rocket scientists and neurosurgeons always have the most cats,” she said. “Thirteen to 15 cats usually.” She does not ignore animal instinct, which she says is separate from intelligence. “Cats have evolved over thousands of years,” she said. “They are intelligent in their own way.”Besides, she said, “I’d rather have a loving companion than one considered to be the smartest.”

I am in agreement with her. Hour family cat we named Happy is about as smart as other cats but he is a very loving kind of cat. He cuddles up to us to get the attention he knows he is going to get. When my wife and I are out of the house and when we return later, our cat is at the entrance waiting for us. Actually, he is waiting to be cuddled. He isn’t super smart. It is just that he isn’t stupid either. This goes for dogs also.

Where dogs stand out, according to Clive Wynne, the director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University is their capacity for affection just as cats have.

Dogs can be trained to do tricks just as bears and other animals. That doesn’t mean that they are  super smart. It is simply that they are trainable.