Which animals are smartest: Dogs, cats, or raccoons?
CAT PEOPLE and dog people have long sparred over which species possesses the best brains.
According to a new study published in Frontiers in Neuroanatomy, the best way to measure cognitive ability is to tally each animal’s neurons.
Neurons are cells that communicate via electrical charge and populate the brain and central nervous system. They are the units that process information. While measuring intelligence is an incredibly difficult affair, Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a Vanderbilt University neuroscientist, and her colleagues believe their method of quantifying neurons in an animal’s brain, especially in the cerebral cortex, is the most accurate tool for judging its capacity for complex thought.
So which animal comes out ahead in the Great Neuron Census? Brace yourselves, Team Cat.
“Dogs have about twice as many neurons as cats,” said Herculano-Houzel, who wrote a book about brains called “The Human Advantage.”
But wait: The average dog is larger than the average cat. Isn’t it a given that dogs would have larger brains and therefore more neurons? This is where things get interesting.
The study found the overall mass of one’s grey matter is not what’s important.The team also examined brains from a domestic ferret, a banded mongoose, a raccoon, a striped hyena, an African lion and a brown bear. While the brown bear’s brain was three times as large as the dog’s, the dog’s had more neurons. In fact, the brown bear’s neuron count was similar to that of the cat, an animal whose brain is about 10 times smaller.
To put some numbers in play here, a cat has 250 million neurons in the cerebral cortex to a dog’s 530 million. Both species are dwarfed by the average human, who clocks in at 16 billion cortical neurons.— Washington Post.