спасибо, товарищ!
Dogs aren’t that “smart”, in fact. When it comes to problem solving they do pretty poorly compared to crows or parrots.
What they are is incredibly good at is relating to us. Understanding what we want, what we need, etc. That’s why we see them as so “smart”, because they are good at doing things that WE found valuable or useful.
A chimpanzee, for example, is “smarter” than a dog, but probably would suck at obeying orders or doing things for us.
Cats are probably as good at problem solving as dogs, but are not as social or able to relate to us and consequently not as good at doing things that we like.
There’s no such a thing as a general intelligence I would say, but rather different skills and different species are equipped differently.
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(From the end of one of Kinky Friedman’s detective novels, but this is reprinted in a sort of essay collection, courtesy of GBooks)
ETA: I’m a dog man myself, but the line about “all the dogs and cats you’ve ever had” has long stuck in my memory.
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We made them?
Say that cats are NOT intelligent as much as you like, but mine has learned the best way to wake me up and get me out of bed is to claw at the wall next to her litter box, making a “nails on the chalkboard” sound. She knows deep down how annoying it is, and will continue until the end of time if it gets me out of bed and closer to feeding time.
ETA: To clarify, I know this is true because if I sit up in bed and put my feet on the floor, she runs away. Once I lay back down, she goes right back to scratching. Lather, rinse, repeat until I feed her.
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The things “we” did to deserve dogs, is equivalent to what w e did to deserve the industrial revolution, medicine, or anything else, really. We were lucky enough to inherit the effort of countless others who weren’t really thinking about future generations as they toiled.
Future generations (if they exist) may well ask, “what did we do to deserve global warming?” The answer won’t have changed.
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I will admit that cats autotune better
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I love my kitties, but they definitely look at me like I am an inferior life form.
Winston Churchill loved cats. I always knew he was someone worth admiring. Came across this article which seems to fit the mood here.
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See, smart but evil!
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Not quite true. Most dogs, including ordinary couch potatoes, are fully capable of doing these things to at least a crummy beginner level. However the average dog owner can’t even be arsed to train their dog not to hump your leg. Don’t blame the dogs.
(Pic of my very smart kitty and my very willing dog, because I couldn’t not.)
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That’s true.
But the point of my comment was not to blame dogs for not being trained. It was to point out that very few dogs are trained work dogs; in fact a majority are couch potato leg humpers- which seems to suit all parties involved just fine.
My young catling just learned to turn the door-knob… and open the door. 
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The same cat that would open the cupboard could also deal with handles on doors as well, and she could also get basically anywhere in the house, including the cathedral ceiling beams in the family room.
My sister used to have a half-Dalmatian who figured out the hasp on the backyard fence gate. She wound up having to put a carabiner through the hasp to keep the pup in.
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Telecommuting, clearly.
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Donald Trump doesn’t like dogs; dogs think Donald Trump doesn’t deserve to live.
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There’s a strong case to be made for the idea of dogs having developed, to put it in anthropomorphic terms, a good sense of character. Being able to identify friend from foe was valuable to us, so we’ve selectively bred dogs to get that, but even beyond that–being able to judge human character in some capacity affected their survival, with dogs capable of judging character better being more likely to survive and reproduce even without humans recognizing and artificially selecting the trait.
That judgment is limited in its depth and scope, obviously, humans have trained their loyal companions to aid them in committing all manner of terrible things because the dogs are still just dogs and can’t understand the difference between things like “hunting for survival” and “helping humans murder other humans” but "bad can’t be measured with on a single axis.
In other words, if a dog doesn’t like someone, whatever. If most dogs react negatively to someone, one must ask themselves what the dog sees that we may not.
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Oooh, members of the Interspecies Synchonized Napping Team!
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