Lance Bernard: Entirely unconvinced that dogs are smarter than cats

Re “Study: Dogs’ brains contain more smarts than those of cats” (Page 5B, Dec. 12): I take issue with the assertion that dogs are smarter than cats. The author asserts that since dogs have about 530 million cortical neurons in their cerebral cortex, and cats have only about 250 million, dogs are smarter than cats. She offers as further evidence that dogs are trainable and cats are not.

However, other studies have shown that although the brains of birds are quite small, they can pack far more neurons into that space than do the mammals. For instance, a parakeet has about 575 million, a raven about 1.2 billion, and a blue and yellow macaw about 1.9 billion. And, oh, by the way, while humans have 16 billion, the long-finned pilot whale has over twice as many. I guess that means they’re more than twice as smart as we are. Trainability is meaningless. Dogs can be trained because they are pack animals conditioned to do the bidding of the pack leader. Cats are solitary predators and have no such conditioning. So the question as to which is “smarter” remains unanswered.

This story was originally published December 13, 2017 at 12:52 PM with the headline "Lance Bernard: Entirely unconvinced that dogs are smarter than cats."