Difference between dogs and cats?

Dogs have owners
Cats have staff

We have genetically manipulated grey wolves into modern dogs over thousands of years, probably molding them to be as we want them more so than any other lifeform. Hemp and its female counterpart come a close second.

I can't watch that link here in UK, national geographic blocked it on copyright grounds. Is it 'Dogs Decoded' ? I found a link that works here : http://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/...videoId=xfsqnc

Saw it about a year ago. Absolutely brilliant. I grew up with cats so my preference for a pet would be feline - but, dogs have an intelligence that is compatable with our own, leading to a relationship that cannot be achieved AFAIK with cats. When I was 5 years old, a border collie (Welsh sheepdog) called Hecate taught me a game. She would start by bringing a small object and placing it at my feet, then looking expectantly up at me. Every time I would try to take the object - a matchstick or the like - She would snatch it away and do a victory circle, then come back to start the game again. She would put the object closer and closer, If I was sitting eventually she would place it upon my knee. If I beat her, it would be placed a little further back next time and so on ad infinitum.

On the other hand, in the same year my dear cat whose name is unfortunately not repeatable due to modern lingo meaning different things, when I let her outside one morning at about 6am (I was an early riser at 5 years) she walked off maybe 20 yards then turned and looked back. Mesmerized by her stare I walked after her. When she saw me following she carried on, if she got to far ahead she stopped and waited. After about 2 hours wandering through fields and hedgerows she dissapeared into a bush so I sat in the grass, 20 yards back and waited. A few seconds later, she reappeared, mouse in jaws, and trotted happily back and deposited the expired rodent at my feet as a gift! The feeling was immense, maybe the bestest gift I'll ever recieve. I ran home to show mom and dad my amazing present (which was still warm!) and was most dismayed when mom took it and threw it in the bin, muttering about diseases or something.

I have thought on that many times, did she think I wasn't getting fed enough? or perhaps she was trying to teach me how to hunt? any way you look at it it seems she was unimpressed by my parents parenting skills...

I read an article, while sitting in our vets office, that dogs and humans are the only two animals who instinctively understand the concept of pointing.

If you point at something while in front of an animal, the animal will focus on the finger, but humans and dogs instinctively will also look at what is being pointed at (splitting the focus between the finger and the area being pointed at)

A most interesting article.

You made a mistake, let me correct it for you:
I love dogs, but cats are the best!:yeah:
Or the original:
Dogs have masters
Cats have slaves

No, it's a clip, from a National Geographic special program, "And man created dog". A very interesting and informative documentary.

I saw another documentary that mentioned this study. Not even primates, (our closest relative) understand the concept of pointing. Humans do. Dogs do. Chimp's don't get it.

Recent years' experimental research results forced scientists to reconsider the former assessement of birds' inferior intelligence, and their brain structure. In case of ravens and parrots, the intelligence is obvious, but many more bird species have scored surprising results in according reasearch and observation projects.

It is also more and more understood that the capability to feel emotions and to read emotional states in others, is far more spread amongst different species, than was thought possible just short time ago. Most prominent examples are not only dogs and parrots, but also gorillas who express sadness and even depression about the death of their babies, and demonstrated the abilkity to understand the suffering of a human in their middle if he is hurt and weak. We are talking about empathy here.

Man has been underesti,mated the intellectual and emotional capabilities of anmials in general, since very long time, me is convinced of. And maybe he did so because we would not like to think og using, abusing, killing and eating a species we recoignise as intelligent, emotional, sometimes even self-aware. I do not want to antropomorphise all animals, or become sentimental or esoterical, but that's what I think.

We want to see ourselves as the crown of all life on Earth, and the master of life on this planet, and we claim the right to deal with all life on Earth just as we pleases, our legitimation we claim to be that we can do things, so we have a right to do them. But honestly said, I think this attitude demonstrates more just how small we still are, and how little we know about the huge system that "life" really is. I often think we are a frog sitting at the bottom of a well shaft, seeing the small round piece of sky above us and thinking: "That is the world, and I see it all and understand it all!"

Three inevitable ingredients of science: imagination, scepticism, and openness. The rest is just correct handling of methodology.

P.S. I like my last sentence. I think this is the first time I make a quote by myself my new sig! :D

Hey I love your new sig Skybird!!:03:

Tee hee, Reece's on heat. :O:

What!!??:hmmm: Must have missed something!!:yep:

Dogs look up to us, cats look down upon us, only pigs treat us as equals ~ W. Churchill

and they shouldn't. :up: