Cats

[chezlaw]

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If wolves need to communicate with each other in order to hunt, that requires a degree of intelligence that say, a zebra doesn't have. That's also why I think carnivores tend to be more intelligent than herbivores. Anything that requires the thoughtfulness of hunting, requires intelligence.


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In the food chain its a huge problem to try to live off something more intelligent that you. I'd guess for that reason alone, you would expect that if A eats B then A is more intelligent than B.

che

[FortunaMaximus]

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<font color="blue"> but you don't care if the cat eats the mouse as long as the mouse is dead your happy. </font>

Do you think if we did care, cats could be trained not to eat a mouse? Or to guard a room full of flying birds without swatting at them (the way dogs have been trained to be near sheep without killing them)?

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Cats can be conditioned using basic Pavlov techniques not to do certain things, yes. Imprinted early enough, you can teach them to leave the fish tank, rabbit hutch, mouse cage alone.

As for guarding a room full of birds, the dynamics are different for a cat than it is for a sheepdog. I'd imagine at a basic level the sheepdog is just protecting its sheep against other wolves and predators as a food source for its alpha, which happens to be a shepherd.

[tolbiny]

[ QUOTE ]
<font color="blue"> but you don't care if the cat eats the mouse as long as the mouse is dead your happy. </font>

Do you think if we did care, cats could be trained not to eat a mouse? Or to guard a room full of flying birds without swatting at them (the way dogs have been trained to be near sheep without killing them)?

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Dogs have been breed for generations to act that way, if you spent the time selecting cats who acted a certain way/obeyed more than their siblings you would probably be able to alter their instincts to where they bgegan to resemble dogs in a few generations.

[luckyme]

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In the food chain its a huge problem to try to live off something more intelligent that you. I'd guess for that reason alone, you would expect that if A eats B then A is more intelligent than B.

che

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Bush is a vegetarian?

luckyme

[Nielsio]

The PBS series "Dogs and more dogs" explains a lot about the evolution of dogs. Very educational and entertaining.

[MaxWeiss]

Training and artificial selection of dogs much more than cats (and different training/selecting for house cats as well).