All around the world, dogs seem to be the center of attention for pets. Dog owners say dogs are smarter, more fun to play, and will protect you better. However, this may not be the case, according to various research. Cats tend to hide their intelligence; they don’t want compliments from their owners. Cats are independent, whereas dogs are social and mostly travel in packs. Because of this, many people believe that dogs are more intelligent, but the basis of measuring the intelligence of cats and dogs are different because they are different animals. Therefore, the intelligence of cats may be underestimated.

Since they cats and dogs are totally different animals, if we test them their intelligence the same way, it might be more favorable for dogs rather than cats. This is like comparing the intelligence of humans and whales; humans being the dogs and whales being the cats in this case. Many scientists say that whales are smarter than humans. However, we humans tend to say we are smarter.

The brain of the cat is similar to humans, much more than a dog’s brain compares to a human’s brain. The anatomy of a cat brain is 90% similar to a human brain. To be more scientific, cats and humans both have temporal, occipital, frontal and parietal lobes of their cerebral cortex. The regions are all connected the same way. The weight of the brain of a cat to its body weight is greater to the ratio of the dog. The cerebellum is also well developed. According to Wei lu at the University of Michigan, “The cat brain sets a realistic goal (for making a mechanical device) because it is much simpler than a human brain but still extremely difficult to replicate in complexity and efficiency,” The brain of a cat is very complex, and no mechanical device can imitate what a cat’s brain can do.

Dogs act in a way that humans think are smart whereas cats are smart, but humans don’t seem to know it. Cats are very independent, and dogs want to show off to their owners, wanting their owners to get satisfied. But how exactly do we measure the intelligence of cats and dogs? Do we measure it by their arithmetic skills? their social skills? There isn’t really one answer, but from all these scientific proofs, it seems like the cat is smarter.

The senses of a cat is more developed than dogs. They hear and see better than dogs. Cats can see within 3 inches very precisely and can hear the sound being made 1 yard away. With approximately 60 to 80 million olfactory cells, cats’ sense of smell is also way better than dogs as well as humans. A human has between 5 and 20 million.

As strange as it seems, cats have a lot of emotion. Dogs would do whatever they could to get their owners’ satisfaction, whereas cats just do whatever they can to please themselves. However, cats do get jealous when another cat comes into the house. A scholar and historical novelist Nicholas Nicastro said, “Cats have become very skilled at managing humans to get what they want — basically food, shelter and a little human affection,” This quote shows that cats do want affection - they just don’t want to show it to the owners. But, we see cats meowing at their owners if they are hungry. Cats get everything they want, but no more. Dogs do a lot of things to make their owners satisfied. In addition, both humans and cats have identical regions in the brain responsible for emotion. This shows that the emotions of humans and cats are very similar.

The memory of cats is a lot better than dogs. Cats have both long term and short term memory. According to the University of Michigan and the Department of Animal Behavior at the American Museum of Natural History in USA, the memory of cats is two hundred times more than dogs. This means that the memory of cats is even better than monkeys and chimpanzees. A fun fact from the Scientific American states that cats can hold 1000 times more “data storage” than an iPad.

Cats have better cognition than dogs. It is true that dogs have a better social IQ than cats, but that doesn’t mean that they are smarter than cats. Cats can solve complex problems, and can also distinguish between complex shapes. Shapes such as the triangle and square are basic for the cats. Also, the observation of cats are greater than in any other domestic animal. If something new and different joins a house, the cat observes it, and as time passes, they figure out what it is, and what it is used for. This makes training a cat very easy because if they are in a new situation, they are able to observe what happens very quickly, and are able to learn quicker than dogs.

In conclusion, cats have the brain, but they don’t want to show it because they don’t want love; they want food and just the basic necessities in order to survive. Huffington Post says, “dogs come when they’re called; cats take a message and get back to you.” This quote can show us that maybe cats are the smarter ones.