Dogs>Cats

I appologize, i was not able to finish my argument with only 10,000 characters, i continue my case.... when they tested a variety of dogs on a task in which they had to pull on the handles of a plastic dish protruding from underneath a wire fence to retrieve some food. The most highly bonded dogs performed worst " but their success rate improved as soon as their owners encouraged them. The researchers conclude that dogs are not poor problem solvers, per se, but tend to favour a collaborative approach. The full genius of this strategy is only revealed when you consider seeing-eye dogs. In their collaborations with blind owners, they often take the usual canine role of junior partner, but when the need arises they step in to solve problems their human cannot master. Chalk one more up to the small-brained wolf. WINNER: DOGS SCORE: CATS 2 " 4 DOGS 7. VOCALISATION Shared ancestry means that all mammals tend to produce the same kinds of vocalisations to convey certain meanings. For example, they make sudden sounds with rising or rapidly fluctuating pitch to attract attention or demonstrate arousal, motivation or readiness. Both cats and dogs play on this mammalian mutual understanding in their vocal interactions with humans. Analysis of cat miaows reveals that they contain acoustic patterns that grab our attention. But the vocal repertoire of cats is quite limited and their calls tend to be idiosyncratic, so they are often interpretable only by their owners. Dogs have far more vocal flexibility. They can vary the length, range, pitch, frequency modulation and tonality of their barks and they use this ability to produce characteristic barks in different situations. Even someone who has never owned a dog can make a good stab at telling, simply from its barks, whether it is lonely, aggressive or happy. Miklosi"s group, who made this discovery, point out that other adult canids, including wolves, rarely bark. He suggests that during the course of domestication dogs may have evolved their elaborate vocal repertoire especially to communicate with us (New Scientist, 12 June 2004, p 52). That"s clever, but complexity is not everything. After all, no matter how much you love your pet, the barking or miaowing can get on your nerves. It looks as though cats may have found a way around this, though. A study published earlier this year reveals the subtlety with which they can use their crooning to ensnare us. By embedding an urgent high-frequency miaow into a blissed-out purr, they produce a sound that brings out our nurturing side. Karen McComb from the University of Sussex in Falmer, UK, who analysed these "solicitation purrs", suggests they work on a subliminal level in much the same way as a baby"s cry, which has a similar frequency range (Current Biology, vol 19, p R507). For their guile, cats get the cream. WINNER: CATS SCORE: CATS 3 " 4 DOGS 8. TRACTABILITY Dogs are easy to train because we have selected them to be so. They have evolved to fit into our homes and meet our needs, and they find it easy to learn and obey our rules. They are especially skilled at cognitive tasks that require cooperation and sharing information to achieve a goal. While other animals such as chimps and dolphins learn by emulation " watching another individual carry out a task and then trying to achieve the same result " dogs learn in the same way as human infants. This process, called pedagogy, entails implicit teaching, with the dog attending to cues such as eye contact, gesture and vocalisation, and then directly imitating the actions of its master (New Scientist, 23 August 2008, p 33). The most basic way to train a dog involves reinforcing the behaviours we want to encourage by giving Fido a titbit of food. Cats can be taught using rewards too. "They respond to stimulus and reinforcement," says Miklosi. But since no one has really tried training cats, we do not know the full extent of their abilities. Although there may be fewer ways to do it, they can probably achieve similar ends to dogs, Miklosi believes. "But dogs really want to do it. They are more interested and take it more seriously." Besides, even without explicit instructions dogs naturally pick up the rules of domestic behaviour. This happens through play, according to renowned animal behaviourist Marc Bekoff of the University of Colorado, Boulder. He argues that the function of rough-and-tumble play is to develop a rudimentary sense of morality, and that such interactions with their owners allow dogs to test the limits of what is acceptable in a domestic setting. Dogs win paws down. WINNER: DOGS SCORE: CATS 3 " 5 DOGS 9. SUPERSENSES Smell, sight and hearing are the most important senses for both cats and dogs. Having created endless breeds of dog to capitalise on their various perceptual talents, we should expect them to outperform the less highly selected cat " and they do show some quite amazing abilities. A bloodhound"s nose, for example, contains 300 million smell receptor sites compared with just 5 million in humans. Its sense of smell is up to 100 million times more sensitive than yours. However, while a dog"s keen nose is legendary, cats are no mean sniffers either. In fact, because there is so much variability among breeds of dog, the average cat, with its 200 million smell receptors, actually has a more acute nose than the average dog. Neither Felix nor Fido can match us when it comes to visual acuity, but their ancestry as nocturnal hunters has left them with some impressive visual abilities. Both have a faster "flicker-fusion rate" than we do, meaning the cells in their retinas take more snapshots of the world per second than ours, giving them superior sensitivity to movement. The main reason for this is that their eyes contain many more rod cells than cones, which also explains their poor colour vision. On the up side, rods are particularly good for seeing in low light. Here, once again, cats have the upper hand. Felix can see in light levels six times as low as we can, while Fido"s limit is thought to be about five times ours. Add hearing to the list, and cats score a hat trick. Their auditory range extends from 45 to 64,000 hertz, far wider than that of dogs at between 67 and 45,000 hertz. WINNER: CATS SCORE: CATS 4 " 5 DOGS 10. ECO-FRIENDLINESS Cats love wildlife " in the UK alone they kill more than 188 million wild animals each year. But dogs are no bunny huggers. They have been implicated in the decline of the rare European nightjar, they disturb ground-nesting birds and, even when walked on a lead, their mere presence may reduce biodiversity (Biology Letters, vol 3, p 611). The real difference in ecological impact comes in consumption. A medium-size dog"s ecological footprint " the area of land required to keep it fed " is 0.84 hectares annually. You could run two SUVs on that and still have change. Even a toy dog such as a chihuahua has a footprint of 0.28 hectares per year. Meanwhile, your average cat"s ecological pawprint, at just 0.15 hectares, looks positively virtuous (New Scientist, 24 October, p 46). WINNER: CATS SCORE: CATS 5 " 5 DOGS 11. UTILITY Dogs can hunt, herd and guard. They can sniff out drugs and bombs and even whale faeces; they guide blind and deaf people, race for sport, pull sleds, find someone buried by an avalanche, help children learn and possibly even predict earthquakes. Cats are good if you have an infestation of rodents. Perhaps that assessment is unfair, though. After all, we love our pets for other reasons. Cats are beautiful and soft, and stroking them has been shown to reduce stress. Then again, dogs are also good stress-busters: owning one can lower your blood pressure and cholesterol levels. What"s more, Fido has other health benefits. Daily dog walks may be a chore, but they repay the effort, not just in terms of regular exercise, but also by providing immune-boosting opportunities for social contact with other dog walkers. That"s why in a head-to-head contest of health benefits, it"s dogs all the way (British Journal of Health Psychology, vol 12, p 145). Daily dog walks may be a chore but they provide regular exercise and immune-boosting opportunities for social contact with other dog owners WINNER: DOGS SCORE: CATS 5 " 6 DOGS So, at the risk of putting the cat among the pigeons, dogs come out on top. By Kate Douglas, feature editor at New Scientist BOOM! SHRECKED M8! BOOM! SHRECKED M8! BOOM! SHRECKED M8! BOOM! SHRECKED M8! BOOM! SHRECKED M8! BOOM! SHRECKED M8! BOOM! SHRECKED M8! BOOM! SHRECKED M8! BOOM! SHRECKED M8! BOOM! SHRECKED M8! BOOM! SHRECKED M8! BOOM! 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