Who's smarter, a pig or a cat?

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when someone adds the word "arguably" to their comment, isnt that just their way of saying "this is my opinion, not fact"

cats are very intelligent

 

Not *my* opinion. However, it has been observed that pigs are highly intelligent. Whether they are more intelligent than a kitten is debatable.

More intelligent than livestock? Debatable.

By the way, do you get a kick out of following me around threads and scoring 'points' against me?

 

not as much of a kick as you get out of aggressive comments.

IQ cannot apply in this situation, you can measure the IQ of individual animals much in the same way as humans, but you cannot measure a species.

It is your opinion, you are the only one debating whether they are as intelligent as pigs, they have been proven to be adept and often superior animals in problem solving and posessing keen long term memories, one study even showed a cat

Cats have a level of cognitive reasoning which is rarely seen in animals, far surpassing even the dog, studies have put them on par with primates and humans for their reasoning, for example, when trying to retrieve a lost object:

Cats are also emotional creatures, they dont act solely on instinct like other animals, they can actually act out of fear instead of instinctively fleeing.

I also remember a study which they pitted cats against other animals for a logical reasoning test, they used the game fetch to carry out this test (and a pig was one of the animals used). The stick was introduced to both animals and then thrown near a wall, later it was thrown over the wall. In the cases where the stick landed on the animals side of the wall, both animals ran to retrieve their stick, when thrown over the wall, the pig ran to the wall, whereas the cat sat still. This was done over a set amount of tests to obtain an average. Each time the stick was thrown over the wall (thus making it irretrievable) the cats made no attempt to retrieve it.
A good test of logical reasoning.

says you, studies have proved otherwise.

Sorry silvery, but it seems that proving that a cat is intelligent goes hand in hand with proving that this cat has suffered severe mental trauma for the rest of its life.

 

Nope.

 

Intelligent or not, pigs taste good. I'm not fond of cat meat.

 

I've never eaten cat, although if next door don't learn to control theirs a bit it might be soon be on the menu...

 

I don't care how smart any animal is, animals should always take a back seat to the needs of human beings. That doesn't include the wants of human beings, mind you, but no animal can ever measure up to a human in terms of intelligence (except where my brother in law is concerned, of course) so I really don't care. Animals are not people, and IMHOO* people who are confused about this are emotionally immature and not thinking clearly.

Does this make me an animal killer or hater? Far from it. I oppose the use of animals for mere human amusement. I have a "run free, little Bob" sort of attitude toward animals. But if the animal is trespassing, or the animal can be used to feed a human, make a shelter for a human, provide transportationfor a human, track down a filthy criminal human, or otherwise help in any practical way, we have every right to use them.

 

@Shoshino

True. With humans, IQ tests are meant to test individuals compared to the average of the population. The average is 100. If we want to test the IQ of animals, we first have to come up with a plausible measure of the average intelligence of the species. Also, IQ test are no longer seen as tests to measure intelligence, but as tests to measure the skills that are needed in taking an IQ test

That is assuming that logical reasoning is an all-or-none feature of the brain. Which it very likely is not. Logical reasoning may very well be a collection of skills, of which most fall on the nurture-side of the nature-nurture split. There may be other tests demonstrating that pigs show skills that we can see as parts of 'logical reasoning'.

@LKD

I don't really agree. For the current state of the animal kingdom, sure, but if evolution would go on, which it will, and produce something as advanced as neanderthals then those individuals are not to be treated as other animals, but more as we treat some native tribes lost in the Amazon or central African forest.

 

The day I see an animal engage consistently in high level cognitive and social functioning, I'll agree with you.

I don't know about the research, but I'd lay odds on the cat -- evolutionarily speaking, the cat has learned how to stalk and kill prey. That takes some relatively high intelligence levels -- capturing / killing another creature is more difficult than evading capture. Pigs, while they are vicious buggers, are not carnivores and do not, to my knowledge, stalk and kill other creatures.

 

You're right. However, different forms of intelligence are needed for capturing a prey than, say, communicating towards each other. Saying that an animal is more intelligent than [other species X] is almost a meaningless statement, because one is then omitting to specify about what sort of intelligence he is speaking. I'm saying almost, because there is no debate on what is more intelligent: a giraffe or a slug.

The idea that all intelligent acts come forth from a workspace somewhere in the front of the brain is, I think, outdated. There are very strong suggestions that our ideas come from different parallel areas of the brain which can operate without us needing to be aware of such processes. The cat will have a highly sophisticated area for anticipating the actions of its prey, while lacking the intelligence needed to deal with other members of its species (and humans), which is something that the pig will have.

 

actually cats are very social animals, they use body language to communicate with one an other, and the audible meow that we hear from cats is actually orientated towards communication with humans, When communicating with humans, adult cats express variations of this tone to demand food or attention, register complaints and convey bewilderment. A slight alteration in tone, pace or punctuation changes the meaning. Cats in close contact with humans use vocalization more frequently than cats that live in the wild, the reason being that owners respond strongly to cat vocalizations, reinforcing the behavior. Adult cats in the wild rarely vocalize; they use mostly body language and scent to communicate, wild cats often hunt in groups and use these silent motions to communicate.

 

Okay, perhaps you get the social cats while I get the aloof ones

 

There's 3 on my back wall now, my wife just went out and put some food down for them, and they took turns to come down and eat it.

I think alot of people mistake laziness for stupidity in cats.

 

I propose that cats are sociable, but because they have emotion more akin to humans (human females ) they are not always in the mood to cuddle. They can't say "I have a head ache" so they mew angrily and leave/push you away with their paws. When they are in the mood to cuddle, I've found that 99% of cats are cuddly, barring cats who were abused and similar.

Perhaps we non-cat lovers are all too accustomed to dogs; ready to love and cuddle practically whenever we want them to. If cats truly have emotion closer to humans, then their reaction is no different from ours when our puppy is flopping in our lap while we're busy with something important. (Importance is subjective... obviously to cats.)

 

Most dog breed have been bred to be permanently stupid (or, more specifically, immature; they're bred to maintain a puppy personality for their entire lives). Cats have recieved no such breeding.

Cats are increadibly intelligent, quite capable of social behavior of a variety of kinds, and excellent problem solvers. On the other hand, I have heard that pigs are also amazingly intelligent. I know of no studies into the topic, though.

Honestly, though, for the next sapient species (assuming there is one), I'd go for the octopus.

 

Some dogs are very intelligent, I've always had border collies. They're energetic, but maintain quite a bit of cognitive reasoning. They do act much more off of instinct than cats, though, I think.

Octopuses have my support as the next sapient creature. They're going to don robes and kill all humans with their minds.

 

Aren't Illithids octopuses nested on human bodies?

 

Ever seen a mantis shrimp?

 

Ive seen a few studies, most things with pigs are owners saying "my pig is really intelligent"

one study Ive seen showed that pigs can be taught simple commands, as well as learn familiar phrases like their name.

another study Ive seen showed that pigs have a memory, they got a pig to use its snout to move a joystick which in turn drew a squiggle on a sgreen, they got the pig to look at that squiggle for an undisclosed period of time, and then came back to it later and, while it didnt say how they got the pig to react to its squiggle, it picked out its squiggle amongst others it hadnt seen before.

 

So, intelligent for a dumb animal, but nothing compared to cats in other words?