Cats rival dogs on many tests of social smarts | Hacker News Reader

Cats rival dogs on many tests of social smarts

sciencemag.org

118 pointspseudolus75 comments

Cats are not dogs which I think throws off people used to dogs.

Unlike dogs cats don't eat two meals per day they eat many small meals over the span of a day, often at a very specific time.

I also think cats throw off some people because they don't understand cats have an internal schedule. Even male cats that wander will do so at specific times and if they meet other Tom's will alter their schedule to avoid conflict.

My parents' cat puts my dad to bed each night. My mom said the cat will wait for him by his bed and if he isn't there at the "correct time" the cat goes to get him. Then once dad is asleep the cat leaves to perform other tasks on its list.

When my uncle visits my parent's their cat comes to greet my uncle. If he doesn't show up at the correct time she is visibly agitated.

Another time my parents cat saw a spider and my mother said the cat will go to the same corner at the same time to look for the spider, it's been going on for seven years.

There are many small things cats owners and we who have grown up with cats know cats have many subtle personality traits.

Cats are not dogs which I think throws off people used to dogs.

Somehow this never occurred to me until you wrote it. And I've had both.

I think a lot of people view cats as smaller, inferior, confusing dogs. And the truth is that they are (quite literally) a whole different animal.

I've had both (but a cat first so bias) and I must say I really prefer cats for that reason: They seem to have more personality, or maybe that's not the right word but rather their behavior seems more diverse, and it's easier to map lots of their quirks and habits to human behavior. Dogs are usually praised as loyal companions and that's mostly how I experienced that too, but it was always a more naive thing. Like a little boy that understood that you're the one feeding him and being really happy and thankful for that. A cat is more like a teenager that needs a lot more space, but when they do spend time with you you enjoy it all the more.

That's only for city folk who essentially trap their cats or dogs in their apartments to help with their loneliness. Frankly I think pet ownership in cities should be made illegal because it's harmful to the pets and wild animals.

What a dog is like or a cat is like depends on setting. A dog is far superior to a cat on a farm or out hunting or in nature. You'll notice a lot more "quirks" out in nature with a dog than a cat.

It's why dogs were domesticated long before we domesticated any animal.

The only thing cats have over dogs is their athletic ability. But in terms of human qualities and interactions, dogs pretty much evolved to be with humans. People who think otherwise might have that parasite that cats give to their owners.

My cat knows when my alarm is supposed to go off. If I miss it or turn if off without getting up, he's usually stomping on my throat and batting at my face to get me up.

In the spring he get a bit thrown off by the increasingly earlier sunrise and usually starts his intervention 10 minutes before the alarm.

He also knows to get inside of my firing arc if he seem me pointing the squirt bottle in his direction.

> Clara leaves. Lyla begins to circle, seemingly in a panic, and then creeps toward the door where Clara exited. Then Lyla meows. And meows. And meows.

Growing up, I had always assumed my cats didn't care didn't when I left them alone. And maybe those cats didn't. But of the 3 cats I've had as an adult, I've been able to get recordings of 2 of them standing at the door and meowing for a few minutes when I leave the house. They also run out and greet me and my husband when we return home. Those two never even met each other, so they each developed those behavior independently. They each had another cat at home to keep them company - but they really do have a strong social attachment to their humans. The other cat... not so much. But I definitely am not surprised to see that studies are finally confirming that some cats are socially quite clever and capable - but it's highly dependent on the particular cat, relationship with the human, and the environment they're in.

I'm convinced most cats know a lot, they just don't feel the need to let you know they know.

Or: given the same stimuli, dogs and cats will react differently, and those behaviors will be interpreted by humans as more or less intelligent depending on the behavior we favor.

Dogs probably have the evolutionary advantage on those tests because they were raised specifically as companions, active tools that we would hunt with. Cats were/are essentially residential pest control, a job that doesn’t require direct interaction with all of the other residents on a regular basis, but now that I’m actually thinking about it, probably does explain their “gifts” if you think of the gifts as proof of work/doing their job.

I digress. I adore cats, and you know how much they adore you when you walk in and are immediately greeted by two cats that want nothing more than to sit in your lap and purr ASAP, human bodily functions be damned. Our tests might show dogs to be more “intelligent”, but I’m skeptical of their accuracy and overall usefulness.

Cats that are raised as kittens and that you've had since they were young basically view you as their mother.

If they are more independent/feral then they don't really bond as strongly and are more wild.

My cat would disagree. He was a stray we got from the pound. He gives me zero personal space and wants constant love. Greets me when I come home and is very affectionate.

He has markings of taking a beating in the wild so I think a full belly and safe environment makes him appreciative.

I have a very similar cat. Rescued him last year. Will not let me out of his sight unless I’ve been home for 5 days straight and played him out.

I didn't raise either of those 2 from kittens though. The first one was 6 years old when I adopted him, the other one was 2 years. The one who doesn't care so much was only 6 months though when we got her. I do wonder if those two were like that with the previous owners though.

Yeah, that maybe a trend, but is not a rule, if even a trend. In my experience, it's entirely random.

Have only raised stray cats. Their desire to bond with me and stay at my door and wait for me to come home would not indicate that they were cold feral strays.

My current and prior cats were both street rescues, as adults. The former was found in Syracuse, NY, and the current is from Iquitos, Peru.

Both have reliably demonstrated a depth of bond to me, and to people they interact with regularly, that directly contradicts your hypothesis.

What fascinates me is that my cat understands the difference between when I've left the house and when I've gone somewhere in the house that she can't follow. I got her in college, and the first few years when I would take her home to my parent's house my mom put up barriers limiting the cat to the ground floor of the house. If I went upstairs to take a shower she would sit at the bottom of the stairs crying the entire time, but if I went out to the store she'd curl up and nap or whatever without a care in the world. Likewise in my current house if I go out to get the mail she won't make a sound. If the windows are open she'll run to the open window and sit in it watching me, but won't cry. If I go into the basement, on the other hand... We actually came to a compromise on that, because the clothes washer & dryer are in the basement. If I'm just doing laundry I'll leave the basement door open so she can sit at the bottom of the stairs and watch me. Naturally if I'm busy in the basement for more than a few minutes she'll start to creep in, but a gentle rebuke will send her back to the door. Not once has she tried to run into the basement and hide or anything like that.

This cat will also come to the door and greet me every day when I get home. I remember one day maybe three years ago when for some reason I came home during the middle of the day. I came inside and and nothing - silent house, no cat, so I came inside far enough to look down the hall towards the bedrooms where I figured the cat was sleeping. At the far end of the hall was a kitty face just barely peeking around the corner, and as soon as she recognized me she let out a machine gun burst of meows and came running at full speed.

Anecdotally, when I volunteered at an animal shelter, we had to undergo training to work with both the dog and feline populations. Something they taught us, and eventually witnessed ourselves, is that cats form much more complex social systems than dogs do. Dogs have the typical alpha/everyone else system, whereas cats seem to have more specialized roles in their organization. Some monitored the food rations, some were on watch at the door, some controlled certain areas or furniture, etc. They even rotated night shifts! Hard to verify experimentally, but work with them often enough and you start to notice the patterns. I think they're much smarter and more sophisticated than we give them credit for, especially when it comes to social behavior.

Athens, like many Mediterranean cities where winter is easy, has a massive urban feral cat population. In that environment they form colonies, often inhabiting the ruins and other protected spaces scattered about the city. Networks of cat-loving residents feed and support the colonies as best they can.

Cat-loving friends there have told interesting stories of observing complex political behavior, e.g. turf wars between rival colonies operating as if they were street gangs. Night ambushes, targeted assassination of enemy leaders.

I took it with a grain of salt, but now I wonder...

After hearing of seagull gangs having turf wars, and observing a ritualised duel between two seagulls with a circle of watchers who proctored it (the whole thing looked like Greek wrestling using beaks), believing in organized warfare between cats... Is easy.

Even the most antisocial of wildcats exhibits complex social behavior in one phase of its life: as a kitten, interacting with its mother and littermates. Kittens meow if they get separated from their mother, they pick up cues from their mother in unfamiliar situations, and so on. Those experiments were very reminiscent of how a kitten interacts with its mother.

Domesticated cats and dogs exhibit neoteny: the retention of several juvenile traits in adulthood. What's more, neoteny appears to naturally result when you selectively breed a canine or feline for a sociable, human-friendly phenotype.

In housecats, social behavior may be a neotenous trait, exhibited by their wild ancestors only in kittenhood. Our pets can be seen as living in a sort of a prolonged adolescence and perhaps even regarding us as surrogate mothers of a sort.

What's especially interesting is that humans also display neoteny, and it is likely related to the theoretized "self-domestication" of ourselves that the article refers to.

It's worth noting that in a way, social behavior is a neotenous trait in wolves as well. Wolf packs are basically families.

The "Alphas" are in fact the father and mother; the rest of the adult wolves are their offspring who haven't yet left the pack to try to establish their own. If the parents are still hale and healthy when the young adult wolves are ready to reproduce, they'll leave the pack to seek mates and establish their own pack.

So pack-style social behavior in a dog is essentially neotenous as well.

I think cats have gotten a bad rap relating to how much they care about their owners. They don't show their everlasting love like dogs do but they love their owners just as much. Cats are independent by nature vs dogs that are pack animals so they behave differently.

In terms of intelligence, cats are usually a top predator so they by definition have to be smart to be able to outsmart all their prey.

In terms of social smarts, they are geniuses. How many species live in people's houses and are completely cared for and it goes on generation after generation? Cats are one of the top ones. If they didn't have social smarts that would not be the case.

None of what the article says should be a surprise to anyone.

For cats in the wild, not murdering you is a sign of respect if not affection.

Many wild species will aggressively defend their territory and instinctively go into murder mode when they even see another cat. They only chill out just enough to procreate, then go back to angry "get off my mountain" cat.

I had a cat who was almost doglike in the amount of affection he showed me. I was often like, dude, don't you have cat things you can go do?

I only say almost though, because he could definitely be normal-cat-moody sometimes. The most dog-like cat I've ever known. He was a good boy. :)

My cat will not leave me alone. She's in my lap all day when I'm at the computer, then on my chest at night when I go to bed. If I try to lay on my side, she'll meow until I roll over.

She becomes agitated when I prepare to leave the apartment. I can't sit down to tie my shoes, else she'll get in my lap and try to stay put.

She'll be eighteen this or next month. I was in elementary school when my parents got her as a kitten.

She's not independent. I don't think cat's being extremely loving is that unusual. My mom complained that her cat also will even follow her trip the bathroom and try to get into her lap when she sits down.

I think highly social cats are much gentler, less in-your-face, than dogs. Cats match my rhythm better, and if I'm working home all day on a computer, it's nice to have a vibrating buddy.

20 years ago, I made the stupid comment to my wife that cats were not intelligent, just parrots of behavior for food. She argued and said "we're getting a cat!" "Sure, whatever" I said, thinking it would be "a dumb cat" and nothing more. Blow my mind, our first cat was a 3 month old feral, scared and pooping everywhere for the first few days. After just short of a week, my wife gained trust, and soon the cat was freely independent and appreciative. (He was scroungy, near death thin when we got him.) Then his personality began to show: he loved my wife painting and gardening, and he loved me working on 3D modeling. He would sit next to my monitors watching me modeling. After about a year of this, I realized as a model neared completion his purring would gain volume. Renders with shadows would get him acting out. I suspected he was reading me and my satisfaction, but that reading was pretty intuitive, and I felt intelligent. Also, he liked to be fed around 2am, and would wake me with a gentle purr to my ear and once waking he'd touch his mouth with his paw take it to my mouth and meow in a unique way he used at no other time. Often we'd stay awake for an a hour after his 2am feeding, and he'd take me into the garden and show me what my wife had been working on, pointing out the new plantings and places where she's trimming. His hunting skills were remarkable too. He was a jumper, and would suddenly leap 6-8 feed into the air and eat a fly. We rarely had flies in-house, thanks to him. Sad to say, he developed feline leukemia, hid it until his body smelled like rotting fruit and died the day we realized. After he was gone, we realized he always positioned himself downwind from us for the last year of his life. He was such an intuitive soul, he solidly taught me the intelligence of cats.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Cats are definitively smart. I was once training my dog how to sit and rewarding him with food. A stray cat caught on the action and come a bit close and sat/stood up as I said the words. At first I didn't get what was up but then I gave him food like the dog. His behavior definitively surprised me.

I have a friendly cat now that lives in my garden. He/She was astray but figured out how to extract resources at my will from kitchen. It is interesting how quickly he learned to respect boundaries, learn my schedule and sense my presence when I'm back home.

It’s not surprising that cats are smart. Many things are... but humans oddly assume that anything that cannot speak their language is not smart unless tested and proven so.

As for the dogs vs cats, my experience with both tells me that dogs often seek human approval and attention. Cats only seek attention (or food or petting), when they want it.

So testing cats would also be a test of human patience and persistence.

Cats are more like roommates, dogs are more like children. Roughly, in my experience.

yes, trying to understand cat and dog communications is half the fun of having them as companions. both of my cats have meows i can understand by sound and context, whether it's hunger, attention-seeking, calling for help, etc., but each has individual tendencies. for instance, my older one uses short fast meows to wake me up to feed him, while the 9-month-old meows her disappointment when i disrupt her play by picking her up. she also tries to talk to me, watching me with her curious eyes to see if i understand her. =)

One of my cats understood a small vocabulary. I first noticed it when I mentioned "catnip" in a sentence and she got excited. She learned a number of words during her life, mostly - but not all - food related. She had no problem picking them out of a sentence, so we learned to avoid saying certain words when not appropriate.

It's funny when I ask my wife if she's hungry and the cats chime in.

That's really funny!

>humans oddly assume that anything that cannot speak their language is not smart unless tested and proven so

I remember when I was a kid I would watch an old Jiminy Cricket cartoon every now and then that repeatedly claimed humans were the only animal that can think and reason. I also grew up with cats and dogs and wondered why this cartoon would say something that seemed so intuitively wrong.

Here's the cartoon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irlkxki41PA

I've been reading the book "Alaska's Wolf Man", which talks some about the behaviors of wolfs. I was impressed with the stories of there intellect and their ability to work together. Obviously, a lot of the intelligence we see in dogs is inherited instinct from their wolf ancestors.

I've also given some thought (based on other reading) about how only a small portion of our brain is responsible for thought, and what we would consider our "self" to be. We are the thinking portion of our brain "riding" on the rest of our animal brain. This explains why willpower alone does not easily change our behavior, our lower-level animal brain is a physical thing (and intelligent in it's own way) and we must reason with it and give it time to adapt in order for us to change our behaviors. (Of course, all this is probably as much imagination as it is science.)

Perhaps many animals are more equal in "raw intelligence" than we would think, it's just that their intellect is "riding" on a different set of instincts.

> Perhaps many animals are more equal in "raw intelligence" than we would think

I think the incredible difficulty of something like machine vision versus, say, boolean logic says a lot about how similar most animals, and especially mammals, are. We consider the parts of our intellect that are most logical to be what distinguishes us from the other species. But it turns out that kind of stuff is really simple, computationally. Computers have been better at it than humans since basically as soon as computers were invented. Whereas all the stuff we have in common with most other animals turns out to be really fucking hard.

Equal or better

https://youtu.be/JkNV0rSndJ0

Both cats and dogs are animals that have been domesticated by humans. Thus, they both understand human social norms to an extent necessary for their survival. Saying that cats are smarter than dogs or vice-versa seems silly. Both have adapted to different human social norms that humans find desirable.

Humans have tons of social norms that animals can exploit to their genetic advantage. A domesticated animal does not need to master all of them to be successful.

This is a long way of saying that dogs are "smarter" at some things and cats are "smarter" at some things, can't we just accept that?

> Both cats and dogs are animals that have been domesticated by humans.

From the article : Dogs and cats traveled different roads to the human home: Dogs evolved from the social, cooperative gray wolf and are the product of thousands of years of intensive breeding and selection by humans. Cats, by contrast, descend from the fiercely antisocial and territorial Near Eastern wildcat, and they largely domesticated themselves, as the tamest cats began to hang out and hunt rodents in early farming villages.

> they largely domesticated themselves as the tamest cats began to hang out and hunt rodents in early farming villages.

This is the problem. Cats didn't domesticate themselves any more than dogs. Dogs chased away predators, cats chased away rodents. Both were domesticated by humans, albeit based on different desirable traits.

Dogs today are essentially a human creation, through genetic selection and breeding, not so much domesticated as, for all intents and purposes, created. And cats, by and large, aren't.

> Dogs today are essentially a human creation, through genetic selection and breeding, not so much domesticated as, for all intents and purposes, created. And cats, by and large, aren't.

Perhaps there are differences in the degree in which humans have sculpted modern cats and dogs, but I don't see much fundamental difference.

There is a remarkable difference in the time period of human intervention, for one thing. Dogs for around 30,000 years versus cats for 9,000.

There are ten times more dog breeds than cat breeds, almost entirely due to humans.

I'm trying to find for reference a recent study of cats' genome [※] that also mentioned how today's house cat is not much different genetically speaking from primitive feral cats, whereas as already said, plenty of dog breeds have never even existed in the past and are completely a product of human driven genetic selection.

( There ARE cat breeds also a product of human intervention, of course, but not in the numbers and variety of dog breeds. )

Edit : May as well add, human selection of dogs has altered them in fundamental ways. Selecting for co-habitation, so they don't attack farm animals, but protect them instead. Selecting for intelligence, so they can obey specific commands. Selecting for strength, so they can pull and carry. Etc. Most selection done with cats has been purely for aesthetic reasons, leaving behaviour aside.

[※] Edit 2 : https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141110161042.h...

> There is a remarkable difference

Yes, there are many differences between the domestication of cats and dogs, but not in any fundamental degree. Humans shaped these animals over time, albeit in different ways. The same is true for other forms of domestication, like cows, sheep, bananas, and wheat etc. Saying one is "smarter" than the other is silly. It's more that humans have selected and bread them for different traits.

I'm expanding on what the article already makes clear. Dogs have been intensely selected and bred, to the point of differing significantly from their ancestors, cats have not. As the article also says, cats have largely domesticated themselves. Humans have done next to nothing to change them, in absolute contrast with dogs. This is not an opinion, it is a fact. And it has nothing to do with intelligence comparisons.

The point is that the animals being compared, while considered 'similar' domestication wise, are anything but.

The breeding of the modern dog into all of it's varied forms was something made possible by domestication, not a factor of domestication.

That's a good point.

I love this thread. My wife and I have 7 cats, and they range the gamut of smarts and emotional intelligence. But all know their names, and 4/7 will come when called by their name.

Strangely, I can confirm those numbers exactly, except exchanging 'wife' for 'labrador retriever'.

Top of the range is a guy with a history much like Carl in the article (whom he even looks like): Rescued as a small, scrawny, lost kitten. Now ten years old, still small and scrawny, but wickedly smart. There's all the basic stuff like opening doors, if necessary climbing nearby furniture to reach the handle, and then there's all the less easily quantifiable behaviour - foreseeing my actions, picking up the gist of relevant conversation, integrating smoothly into domestic life, balancing resources (food and litter) between upstairs and downstairs, and undoubtedly lots that I no longer notice, because I've come to take it for granted.

it's good to see a study confirm the behavior that i've seen with several cats i've had as an adult. while not with all, i often feel that it was because of not caring rather than not having the intelligence.

my current companion, a 3 year old tuxedo, loves to travel wherever she can with me in her bubble backpack, and meows heavily when i leave her behind. she always comes when called (either to her name, or to "kitten") and acts extremely intelligently. i feel that many cat "owners" who have had multiple cats have seen great intelligence in them that easily rivals dogs.

Please tell me more about the bubble backpack, I have a cat that might like traveling with me.

I need to know too

i bought mine on amazon, it shipped from china. from what i understand, i got extremely lucky in that only somewhere near 50% of cats seem to like it. this is the review that i learned about how many cats like it vs not liking it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mS-F4k4TnY and mine (hers) is similar (but blue) -- i had the backpack before i saw the review.

she doesn't like to ride in cars, and is wary of elevators, but loves going to the pub. she's happy to sit in it with the backpack open when she's not at home, and simply purrs and rubs her face/head on my hands when i reach in to pet her.

one warning: it is an attraction, she has had many people wishing to take photos of her ... thankfully she loves getting her picture taken.

editing to add: this is the one i purchased - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J2V5LOM

i can provide a photo of her in it if really needed

That doesn't seem like enough ventilation.

I've seen someone wearing something like this one once https://www.chewy.com/pet-gear-i-go-plus-traveler-black/dp/4... seems like a better idea.

the sides are mesh (you can see completely through the backpack on its sides), along with the 3 ringed holes per side, so there is constantly air moving through it. she prefers the bubble attachment (the other is a perforated round disc) so that she can watch everything around her, and thus know she would not like the one you linked.

she is never in high heat while in her backpack, and airflow is very good throughout it.

I have a cat who used to like to travel. We even drove across the country for more than a week.

He would sit on the rear shelf and look out the back window at the cars and trucks and people would honk at him. Or he'd stretch out in the sun on the dashboard right under the window. Or he would snuggle in like a loaf on the center arm rest so I could pet him while I drove.

All that ended a couple of years ago when we went through a car wash. It was very traumatic for him and now he hates to even leave the house. I wonder if he thought we were under attack or something.

One time I ran an overnight ultra marathon. It was 12 hours of running, and I managed 62 miles (100 kilometers).

Anyway, I made it home and I was laying on our bed not asleep, but about to be. Our family cat jumps up and sits on my feet purring. The cat somehow knew, and massaged my feet. It had never done such a thing before, and never again after. I have never had my mind blown more by an animal.

Your feet were probably extremely warm from all of the blood and lymphatic fluid pumping through them to heal the damage.

Unfortunately, the cynic in me says your cat was most likely being a mooch.

I feel tests like these are odd. The theoretical conclusions you could draw, at best, are vague curiosities.

I also think they should not treat all cats equally. Maine Coon cats, for instance, have always struck me as an order of magnitude more intelligent than average cats.

The difficulty is in comparison. Dogs and cats will be motivated by different things thus the form of any cognitive test will differ between species. This tends to mean that you cannot directly compare mean scores between species. What this usually resorts to is a testing strategy in which you test for minimal competencies. This comes up in infant reaearch all the time. Can we set up a test in such a way so that we can show that infants remember X. Unfortunately, this rarely gives you information about how good they are at it, how able are they to do it when the context is not perfectly arranged to support that type of cognition, etc. So I suspect that cats and dogs both show some set of cognitive competencies, but how they actually compare in intellectual ability will be quite difficult to assess.

Precisely my point. Theoretically it’s not useful, at best

“In ancient times, cats were worshiped as gods. They have not forgotten this”

— Sir Terrence.

N=1 story of great childhood cat: he was a Russian blue, which I later came to understand as a particularly smart and affectionate breed.

He would come like a dog, knew many words like "peanut butter," was very clever at opening and closing all manner of doors, and was very affectionate, if you were the only one around.

Literally would grab your ankles and try to restrain you from leaving. But only if you were the only one around.

Incredible sense of spatial awareness and time of day, too. Both seem common traits to cats.

I find it hard to believe that it took until 1996 to figure out that dogs can follow gaze and points.

That's the basis of how bird hunting dogs work. They follow the end of the firearm like a finger, see the fowl, see the fowl fall, then go retrieve it.

For anyone wondering if cats are smart, here are two of ours after I was done playing with them with their bird feather toy one night. I figured I would stash it on a chair and maybe they would entertain themselves. And they did!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46rROBUDPYI

Tulie, the one on top working the toy, is the smarter one. She had been studying how I work the toy and decided she could do it herself!

Sephie, who Tulie was entertaining, is not quite as smart, but super sweet.

They and the dogs are best of friends.

Dogs are disturbingly human in their flaws, something I haven’t noticed in our cats (other then them being mean). Our dog is racist and misogynistic. Smaller and younger dogs are picked on and bigger dogs are pandered to. Most of this has been stamped out, but it flares up periodically. Having dinner served and permission to eat granted by a female who goes out the door first is both amusing to watch and educational for him.

This is the most bugman comment I've read here in a long time.

Amongst all the domestic cat love in here please let's not forget the devastation they cause to wildlife. The same isn't true of dogs.

Cats are clearly smart, but also narcissistic egotistical psychopaths that are liable to try to tear your head off if you don't let them win. A dog would never do this:

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-48167754/catwalk-ga...

An non-neutered/spayed dog wouldn't spray on someone's leg? That is false. Dogs tend to be VERY free with their markings.

This is probably just a joke comment, but in case you're serious, many cats are just unbelievably sweet.

Research actually shows that dogs start munching on their dead owner much sooner than cats:

> In 24 percent of the cases in the 2015 review, which all involved dogs, less than a day had passed before the partially eaten body was found. What’s more, some of the dogs had access to normal food they hadn’t eaten.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/pets-dogs-cats-e...

Cats are extremely intelligent, it only takes spending a few days with one and it becomes quite obvious. Dogs on the other hand, I haven't quite figured them out...

Have a Siamese, he’s smarter than any dog I’ve had or met.

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