New Scientist study finds dogs are better than cats
Posted on 04/12/2013 8:53:24 PM PDT by Altariel
Study proves what we've always suspected Dogs are better than cats Take that, stupid cats
IT'S a claim that's sure to put the cat among the pigeons.
A STUDY into character, intelligence and usefulness shows dogs are better pets than cats - but only by a whisker.
In the "great pet showdown" experts compared 11 traits from brain size to environmental impact by looking at research published in scientific journals.
Dogs came out on top in six categories to cats' five, the Daily Mail reports.
Staff at New Scientist magazine first listed the areas where cats fared best. These included having bigger brains in proportion to their body size.
Cats' brains also contain more cells, with about 1.4 million more devoted to complex functions such as memory and attention than dogs' brains.
The cats' second point was awarded for being more popular, with 204 million living in the top 10 cat-owning nations compared to 173 million dogs in the 10 countries where canines were most in vogue.
Felines also get more attention from humans, with blissed-out purrs actually disguising a call to be noticed that their owners find irresistible.
Although dogs can vary the length, range, pitch and frequency of their barks, they cannot compete with the attention-seeking of cats.
It was a similar story when it came to senses. Cats can see in lower light than dogs and have a far wider hearing range and a keener sense of smell.
They are said to be "greener" pets because their smaller appetites equate to a smaller ecological footprint - the area of land required to farm their food.
Even a small dog such as a chihuahua has a bigger annual footprint than the average cat.
But in the other six categories examined - many of which related to how the animals interact with humans - dogs had the edge.
Dogs have a longer shared history with humans, and may have been domesticated as long as 135,000 years ago. Cats are relative newcomers to our homes.
Similarly, dogs have a greater ability to bond with their masters. Even four-month-old puppies choose a human companion over another dog, research has shown.
Dogs scored a third point for their superior powers of understanding.
One study found that a border collie called Rico had mastered the meaning of more than 200 words.
Dogs can also follow human gestures, such as an outstretched finger or a nod of the head to find food.
While this may not seem impressive, chimps struggle to do it.
The ability to perform roles such as being a guide dog for the blind meant dogs were rated better than cats when it came to their problem-solving abilities.
And they are also said to be easier to train.
With the scores tied at five-all, the deciding point was awarded for usefulness - with dogs coming out on top.
Dogs, studies show, help cut human stress, while taking them for walks keeps their owners fit and helps them meet new people. New Scientist says: "Dogs can hunt, herd and guard."
"They can sniff out drugs and bombs; they guide blind and deaf people, race for sport, pull sledges, find someone buried by an avalanche, help children learn and possibly even predict earthquakes."
And in a conclusion bound to set tongues wagging, it adds: "Cats are good if you have an infestation of rodents."
How many of those were house cats....
Wow, that’s pathetic. Dogs are better than cats by a small margin, when cat are not even trying to be good.
If one wants to find the dumbest comments posted on the Internet, just go to FR.
My cat responds to hand signals. And he definitely needs no signals to find food.
Dogs can be entertaining once in a while but as a general rule:
Cats rule, dogs drool.
Theres nothing scientific about this stupid study. Its nothing more than just a poll of people’s opinions
But cats do not do this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2757998/posts
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NARRATOR: The key to a dog’s ability to read our emotions might lie in something we all do without knowing it.
DANIEL MILLS: When we express our emotions in our faces, we don’t do it symmetrically. It’s been shown that, if you take somebody’s face when they’re expressing some emotion like happiness or anger or something like that, there is a difference between the left and right side.
NARRATOR: Composite faces consisting of two right or two left sides look very different.
DANIEL MILLS: One of the theories is that maybe our emotions are more faithfully presented in the right side of our face, and that’s the side that we tune in to.
And when we look at a face, we have what’s known as a natural left-gaze bias, so you naturally look much more towards the left, i.e. the right-hand side, of somebody’s face.
NARRATOR: Eye-tracking software demonstrates that, when presented with a human face, we nearly always look left first. Daniel Mills wants to find out if dogs use the same trick to read human faces.
DANIEL MILLS: Shifting the direction of your gaze, we thought, was fairly unique to people, until we started looking at dogs.
ANAÏS RACCA (University of Lincoln, England): Taz! Tazy!
NARRATOR: To test the theory, his team recreates this experiment with dogs.
ANAÏS RACCA: Moose, what’s that?
NARRATOR: They present a series of images showing human faces, dog faces and inanimate objects and record the direction of a dog’s gaze with a video camera.
ANAÏS RACCA: We found that dogs, when they are looking at pictures of dog faces or objects, they will look randomly on the left or the right.
NARRATOR: But, when it comes to human faces, they make a remarkable discovery.
ANAÏS RACCA: So now we have Taz looking at a human face. So, first she’s looking in the middle of the screen, and here is the first eye movements on the left. She’s in the middle and she’s going on the left.
So, now, this is Moose, and then we can see really well that this is a left gaze; from here to here. We can see the white here. She’s even moving her head.
NARRATOR: Does this mean dogs can read human emotions? As far as we know, no other animal has this relationship with the human face. And dogs don’t do this with each other. This suggests that dogs have acquired a new skill enabling them to communicate with us on an emotional level.
DANIEL MILLS: Being able to detect when somebody is angry or potentially going to be harmful to them, you could understand that there may be a biological advantage in being able to read people’s emotions and, equally, that it makes sense for a dog to approach somebody when they’re smiling.
If dogs can read human emotion, and increasingly the scientific evidence is beginning to point in that direction, that’s going to form the basis of a very powerful bond between human and dog.
NARRATOR: Evidence like this appears to underpin our conviction that dogs understand us in a way that other animals cannot.
Obviously you’ve never heard cats sing the bagpipes.
In a disaster, if you were lying bloodied on the floor, your dog would try to help you.
Your cat would use the opportunity to hone it’s murderous rampaging skills...
fncats...
Well everyone knows dogs are better than cats just like we know men are better than women.
Many of the terrier breeds live to catch vermin. I’ve had cats that lounged along side snakes in our garage. Ultimately it will depend on the animal’s ambition.
Obama would agree:
did someone steal your sense of humor?
And farmers have terriers, why?
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