Go read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jun/16/psychologist-test-outsmarts-cats

Kathy D-NJ
BYJ is #1 in my heart & ETW is a close 2nd!!!

Raise your hand if you think Cats knowingly refused to play the inferior human scientist's silly little experiment.

Pffft.
Tell this to my cat who figured out if he jumped 3 ft up the wall and flipped the light switch that the light would go on when he wanted it.

The tests are flawed, as some of the commentators on the article pointed out. In fact, cats can be taught to use a flush toilet. When a cat wants to go outside, they often attempt to turn the doorknob. Housebreaking a cat is incredibly simple. Housebreaking a dog is not.

The basic failure of this researcher is that she starts with the assumption that cats and dogs think alike, and that both think like humans. But to settle this, and get a definitive answer, I'll ask an expert.

After consulting with an expert, I can safely state that cats are far more intelligent than dogs.

aepm wrote:

Pffft. Tell this to my cat who figured out if he jumped 3 ft up the wall and flipped the light switch that the light would go on when he wanted it.

Or the cat that (miffed I'd locked him in for the night.) hopped up on the counter, waited till I'd made eye contact and calmly unlocked the door and stared at me. (Note: this was not my cat, I was housesitting so it's not like he was use to communicating with me either.)

Anyone who's ever owned both knows who's smarter.
Cats>Humans>Dogs

Samantha has been actively watching TV since I brought her home at 6 months. I tell her puppies are on the TV and she goes to the TV. They say cats get bored watching TV because they smell nothing is there and move on. That's not so because as you can see in my signature Samantha is watching Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban and she watched that movie for more than an hour. First standing like in the picture then laying down with her paws and tail tucked in.

Now if she can teach Calvin and Suzy to watch TV with her that will be hysterical. But right now she's scared of them so that's out.

Min Joo wrote:

Raise your hand if you think Cats knowingly refused to play the inferior human scientist's silly little experiment.

WELL SAID! That's bound to be the reason!!

I rest my case.
Youtube video : Click here to load video  ( Watch on YouTube )OptionsClose

How many dogs use the door knocker?

You actually linked to the dog trying to understand how his kitty got on youtube.

here's the cat.
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5325167/14039223

both are funny though thanks.

Min Joo wrote:

You actually linked to the dog trying to understand how his kitty got on youtube. here's the cat. http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5325167/14039223 both are funny though thanks.

Thanks for fixing it!

Okay, now I'm scared.

Cats Do Control Humans, Study Finds wrote:

If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat. Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to the findings. This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. While people usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some cats make this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed. The study showed that humans find these mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore. "The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response," said Karen McComb of the University of Sussex. "Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom." They know us Previous research has shown similarities between cat cries and human infant cries. McComb suggests that the purr-cry may subtly take advantage of humans' sensitivity to cries they associate with nurturing offspring. Also, including the cry within the purr could make the sound "less harmonic and thus more difficult to habituate to," she said. McComb got the idea for the study from her experience with her own cat, who would consistently wake her up in the mornings with a very insistent purr. After speaking with other cat owners, she learned that some of their cats also made the same type of call. As a scientist who studies vocal communication in mammals, she decided to investigate the manipulative meow. Tough to test Setting up the experiments wasn't easy. While the felines used purr-cries around their familiar owners, they were not eager to make the same cries in front of strangers. So McComb and her team trained cat owners to record their pets' cries - capturing the sounds made by cats when they were seeking food and when they were not. In all, the team collected recordings from 10 different cats. The researchers then played the cries back for 50 human participants, not all of whom owned cats. They found that humans, even if they had never had a cat themselves, judged the purrs recorded while cats were actively seeking food - the purrs with an embedded, high-pitched cry - as more urgent and less pleasant than those made in other contexts. When the team re-synthesised the recorded purrs to remove the embedded cry, leaving all else unchanged, the human subjects' urgency ratings for those calls decreased significantly. McComb said she thinks this cry occurs at a low level in cats' normal purring, "but we think that cats learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans." In fact, not all cats use this form of purring at all, she said, noting that it seems to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners rather than those living in large households, where their purrs might be overlooked. The results were published in the July 14 issue of the journal Current Biology.

Quote:

"but we think that cats learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans."

Ya think!?!

This explains everything!!!!

I read a book about that.

You ever notice your cat meowing without making a sound but only when it has your attention. (Or someone else's) But doesn't do the same behavior with anyone else?

Supposedly it's a "This is between me and you. other humans don't need to know you gave me that piece of bacon you got there." meow.

The soliciting purr caught on tape!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8147566.stm

if you scroll down they interview the researcher and you hear the purr verses a regular purr.

Yeah I know that sound. It's also often accompanied by rather violent head rubbing if you don't move fast enough for them.

Yep--that's the purrrrrr!
Gets us every time.