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Comment by speedplane | Hacker News Reader

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?

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> 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.

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