They are certainly more intelligent than most pets (dogs/cats). They'll figure things out a lot faster and without specific training. For example, I knew one cow that learned how to open gates and doors with their tongue just by watching us open the doors/gates.
Getting a pet to do those sorts of behaviors usually takes treats and a lot of time.
Honestly, the only thing that surprises me about this is the fact that cows have bladder (and bowel?) control.
We have a guy who is able to to open any stall he wants, and he opens the stalls of other horses that he likes. As evidenced by the fact that he would open his own stall and then let a certain set of horses out.
If that wasn't amazing enough... He got into a conflict with another horse (nipping at each other), and he stopped letting that guy out of his stall.
Livestock is... complicated. Horses collectively are unreasonably stupid. But some individuals are amazing. Before I came into contact with them, I thought they all were "Glassy eyed dinosaurs". It's a weird trick because you see people make declarative statements about them, up to and including they aren't able to recognize people. But, when you work with them its absolutely clear they have preferences. They prefer certain riders and certain activities.
It's also interesting to note that domestic cat vocalizations are used primarily to communicate with humans! They notice we use speech, so they do too! And while some meows are common, others vary between cats -- it's like their very own language to talk to their owner.
If karma theory is to be believed, evolution happens at the level of individual soul (called jivatma) – gradually a soul takes birth starting from the smallest microorganism and traveling all the way through 84m type of species before becoming a human. It's not exactly linear and one can be stuck in the same type of species for more than once or jump to a human being early. The difference between a human being and animal is the development of the intellect sheet of the consciousness; however, depending on what was your prominent animal tendency in past births, some humans act as lion, some as cow, some as folks, observable in their behavior. It's also possible to fall back to animal birth depending on your karma as a human or for other reasons.
Can we validate this theory? Yogic methods are there which requires mastering meditation (many enlightened beings have verified it such as Buddha). Scientifically I don't know. Maybe in future it'd be possible.
As opposed to? I read this the same as "circles, and round circles in particular...." Is there any other kind?
edit: ... but it is a very complicated topic even if most of it isn't even close to anything I'd call actual intelligence.
Plenty of them don't like people, though. (And many for good reason.)
What really surprised me was how friendly and fun the donkeys were. The one that did coyote patrol for the emus always made hilarious happy-donkey sounds whenever he saw me walk the fence line, and it was nice to be able to work in his paddock and have a buddy to hang out with instead of a sneak horse-nip while you're focused on something else.
Was the set independent of what stalls they were in? Or were they always in the same stalls? If the latter, it could just be that he knows he can open some stalls more readily than others.
That wouldn't account for it, since he changed who he'd let out based on his personal relationship with the individual in the stall.
Maybe you had the DaVinci of horses in your stable?
E.g.: Our neighbor has two cats. One is very needy and craves our attention. The other rarely acknowledges people and spends its free time in stalking mode.
There are a few houses that butt up to the area.
The horses have owners, and people stop to pet them.
One night a home owner heard a horse yelllng out his window. He didn't think that much about it, but the horse would stop yelling.
He shined a flash light on him, and decided to call one of the other horse hill owners.
The owner finally arrived, and brought a vet.
The horse's stomach twisted. The vet fixed him.
Whenever that guy goes out on his porch, the horse runs up to him. Almost out of respect?
This was something I didn't believe until my mom and dad recalled what it was like growing up on small farms with a house cow in India.
The they are incredibly intelligent and excellent judges of emotion. They are protective of their owners and can be trained quite well.
This was their rational argument for asking me to not eat beef. I still eat beef, but I can imagine that it's quite distressing when a cow is no different than a pet dog to you. (religious reasons aside)
It was one of the rare times in my life where I was struck dumb and mute. I could only stare at her, and she further offered that it's Trident gum.
After a moment I asked whether Penelope swallows the gum, and the lady said no, never. She chews for an hour or two and then spits it out, presumably after it's lost its flavor.
I felt like everything I knew about life up to that point was wrong.
No way does the flavor of trident last an hour
Of course it all made sense once the make of the gum was revealed.
This describes my dog, two cats, and fairly often my children.
Speech (with cancer warning): https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/west-bengal-bjp-chief-dilip-...
One dog noses the wire up, while another dog pushes on the gate itself with her paw.
I had to start latching it with a carabiner where the loop cannot come over the fence post.
I don't know if they learned it from watching me, or by trial and error, but I certainly did not train them to do it.
Probably not much control; they might notice they need to go about 30 seconds before they really gotta go. If your house cow can't get out by itself there might be a pie by the door and an apologetic gaze.
I've known a cow that was raised in a small pen under a hickory tree; he learned to keep a bathroom corner after the crate trained dog suggested it to him, I think.
We run a goat as part of our dog pack, she's as house trained as I expect from any puppy that age, but she needs to go out often and may have the urge hit suddenly.
https://www.superpages.com/em/basics-pot-bellied-pig-care-fe...
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/other/cunning-pig-in-china-...
I have a 20 week old shiba inu (regarded as one of the most intelligent - and stubborn - breeds) and he figured out his crate's latch weeks ago. Problem is he just can't open it from the inside, but if he really wants out he will use his tongue on the latch from the inside and try for several minutes to flip it over and move it. Fortunately he's just barely not capable of actually getting it done.
It's pretty variable in dogs, I've had both some real dumb ones (still great dogs, just a bit dopey) and also super intelligent ones.
Just for fun, some of the behaviors that come to mind (not all the same dog):
- opening cages, even with clips in place to "lock" it a bit
- intentionally looking pitiful/hurt only when they know a certain gullible human is around to get extra attention (access to the couch)
- turning on a light switch that gets the neighbor dog to bark, causing our other dogs to run over and look, then stealing whatever dog bed she wants
And then just in general, dogs and other pets seem really good at training humans if the human allows (most do, you really have to pay attention quite a lot to avoid it).
Intelligence doesn't really matter. For factory farms, intelligent livestock simply have no chance of escaping.
For small time farms, the animals are generally kept pretty happy anyways, so they've often have no reason to try and escape. There's not a lot of farms inbetween at this point.
no treats were ever given to them for this.
I wish we knew how to make them do that because he wasn't the only vomiting cat.
My dog figured how to use the lever from watching us a few times. I can barely teach her anything else though.