Which Is Smarter, a Cat or a Dog? Neurons and Experiments

Every cat-versus-dog argument eventually reaches the question of which is smarter. Lining up the research shows both clear differences on some measures and almost none on others. Understanding what differs is more useful than deciding a winner.

Dogs have more cortical neurons

Jardim-Messeder and colleagues (2017) estimated the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex of carnivorans and reported about 530 million for dogs and about 250 million for cats. The same study found that a brown bear, whose cortex is roughly ten times larger than a cat's, has only about as many cortical neurons as the cat.

Brain size and neuron count are therefore not proportional — and neuron count does not translate directly into an intelligence score. In human research, the correlation between brain volume and intelligence is likewise weak (see IQ and genetics). Treat neuron counts as an indication of available processing resources, not as a league table.

No difference in reading a human pointing gesture

Dogs are famous for reading human cues. Yet when Miklósi and colleagues (2005) compared dogs and cats on finding food from a pointed-at container, performance did not differ significantly. Cats, too, can use a human social cue.

The same study observed that cats looked to humans for help less often than dogs did when a task became unsolvable. That is a difference in strategy — whether to solve problems in cooperation with a human — rather than in processing ability.

Cats hold their own on memory and physical inference

Takagi and colleagues (2017) tested whether cats could later use 'what and where' information encoded incidentally during a single feeding episode. The results resembled those from studies using the same task with dogs, suggesting cats also retrieve information from a single experience.

In Takagi and colleagues (2016), cats looked longer at containers when a rattling sound and the presence of an object did not match — evidence that they use physical causality to infer an unseen object. Our article on whether feline intelligence can be measured as IQ covers related work on space and objects.

The difference is evolutionary history, not brainpower

Dogs have been selected for cooperative roles alongside humans for well over ten thousand years. Cats settled near people while hunting rodents around grain stores and were never strongly selected for following instructions. That history shows up as a difference in how easily each species can be tested.

Studies of cats frequently report individuals dropping out partway through. A missing result may reflect the absence of any reason, from the cat's point of view, to keep going. In cross-species comparisons it is always worth asking whether only what could be measured is being compared.

For humans too, profiles beat totals

The urge to settle intelligence with a single number appears in human contexts as well. But two people with the same overall IQ need not share the same strengths (see types of cognitive ability and fluid versus crystallized intelligence).

The full picture of feline cognition research is organized by topic in can a cat's IQ be measured?.

The free NekoIQ IQ test measures spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, logical inference, and classification in 20 questions and about 10 minutes, and shows your tendency in each domain. It is not a competition against cats or dogs, but it does reveal the shape of your own strengths. Results are estimates for self-understanding and are not a substitute for an official intelligence test.