Dog and cat lovers love to discuss which of the two is more intelligent: the dog or the cat. Is there any scientific evidence as to who is actually smarter?

 

 

Science supports arguments in favour of both sides. Dogs have larger brains than cats and the dog's brain has continued to grow over generations, while the cat's brain has been the same size for 8000 years.

Dogs are more sociable than cats, which actually leads to an increase in brain volume. As cats do not evolve in terms of socialising, the gap between dogs and cats widens in this respect. Unlike dogs, cats only seek human contact when they feel like it, a fact that many cat lovers like to interpret as a sign of independence and therefore intelligence.

Dogs can be trained and learn tricks, cats rarely are. Here, too, it is debatable whether the cat is incapable of being trained or is clever enough to recognise its independence.

 

 

The ability to be trained makes dogs important members of society, for example police dogs, guard dogs and guide dogs. But is this really a sign of genuine intelligence, or rather an indication that the dog can be trained and is therefore intellectually inferior?

 

Cats have twice as many neurones in the cerebral cortex as dogs (300 million to 160 million). This means that cats have a greater capacity to process information than dogs.

While dogs are mostly dependent on humans and their care, cats can take care of themselves. Dogs are so dependent on their owners that they have lost the ability to fend for themselves and survive in the wild.