talked about the intelligence of dogs and publish ratings on intelligence dog breeds. Now I would like to tell about the intelligence of cats.

 

Unlike dogs, intelligence, which recognize the most inveterate skeptics, cats are traditionally considered to be more cunning than intelligent. Many people believe that cats are more stupid than dogs because they are resistant to training and they are very rarely seen on the entertainment show or a circus.

 Indeed, it is almost impossible to train a cat to "serve" to sit or lie down on command. But it's not about intelligence. Unlike dogs, social animals, cats - individualists. They are difficult to influence praise or punishment, and they will not prodelyvat pointless from their perspective tricks just to please his master. But they learn very complex behaviors independently, using the same mechanisms that young children - observation, imitation and trial and error.

 

One example of learning by observing - how cats learn to open the door. The most intelligent of them is quite a few times to see how a person presses down on the doorknob, then to freely penetrate into all the rooms in the apartment. In the same way - watching the owners - many cats learn to use the toilet.

 With imitation cats quickly learn from each other new skills. If you have an apartment in more than one cat, this feature can create a lot of problems owners - as long as one of the pupils learned how to open the wardrobe door, which is food, it will be very soon be able to both. Moreover, cats can learn from dogs (sometimes cats that live in the apartment with the dogs start to chase the ball and bring it to the owner) and even cooperate with them when necessary  to steal food - for example, the cat opens the closet and discards the package containing the food on the floor, tearing his dog, and then they both regales content.

 

Many features of the behavior of cats, who seem to be natural, in fact, too, are the result of self - for example, the habit of scratching or meowing outside the door to open it. It is necessary to keep in mind that cats have an extremely good memory, and if you at least once the door was opened after a cat in her poskreblas, it is likely that it will do so always.

 

Do the breed for intelligence?

 This question has no simple answer. Recently, "Animal Planet" published a rating of "most intelligent" species, in which the primacy of keeping Siamese and oriental cats, sphinxes and colorpoint - but zoopsychologists refer to the data with skepticism. According to them, different breeds of cats are not the intellect, and temperament. The active and excitable cat brighter manifests itself in everyday life, so it may seem wiser than her more calm and even-tempered companions.