Who is smarter?
Dogs (The lovely Ruby would agree)

Or cats?
Leap and Haku are too sleepy to care.

Show Notes:
Science Alert Cats vs Dogs

Study done by neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel from Vanderbilt University in the US.

Spoiler alert!

It’s dogs. 

Episode Transcript

Welcome to Brain Junk, I’m Trace Kerr and I’m Amy Barton. And this is a Brain Storm.
AB: I’m curious for your answer.
TK: Okay.
AB: You have cats and dog.
TK: Yes.
AB: Which one is smarter?
TK: Uh, that really kind of diff between the two of us.
AB: We would need an operational definition of smart.
TK: Well yeah, I know cause I’m like, I know, that’s exactly what I just did there. Well I would have to say that from a training standpoint, dogs are easier because you know, I’ve trained a dog and cats. I don’t know. I mean somebody who lays around it as absolutely nothing and gets human beings to do everything for them with pretty much no giveback. I in some ways that might be smarter.
AB: That’s true. Well you agree with neuroscientists, Suzana Herculano-Houzel from Vanderbilt University and she did a study in 2017 about this subject, which, which is smarter and the subject has been addressed before and cats have always won because they talk about size of brain, volume of gray matter.  They way in relative size to body cats win normally when you do it that way. But she was looking into it and she’s like, I don’t think it’s that simple. Other scientists have done this before. They have gone in and looked at the number of neurons, especially in the cerebral cortex that determines the richness of their internal mental state and their ability to predict what is about to happen in their environment based on past experience.
TK: Okay.
AB: So past studies have actually tested this and they had roughly counted 300 million neurons for cats and 160 million neurons for dogs. And she’s like, ah, I’m gonna recheck that. And her study found flip flop about 530 million for dogs and 250 million for cats.
TK: So why are we getting such different numbers?
AB: I think some of it has to do with advances in science study size, um, the technology available to do those counts counting.
TK: Ah, okay.
AB: So the, uh, it’s dog’s friends, but what’s more dogs had the most neurons of any carnivore, even though they don’t have the largest brain. So like bears are not exponentially smarter than dogs. Um, however, the one fun thing that she did find is that the oddball carnivore is the raccoon. Even though it’s close to a cat in size, it is close to a dog in neurological size.
TK: Oh, I believe that in a second. Don’t think we’re domesticating those this soon. But they are as clever as they appear in your backyard, stealing your trash and doing all that fun stuff.
AB: So, yup. Dogs.
TK: Oh yeah. You mean cause they’re just, they’re easier to train. Although, you know, I’ve seen people train cats to do all, yo...