Showing posts with label intelligence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intelligence. Show all posts

Saturday, 17 January 2009

Thought for the week

I was just reading a page about animal intelligence, and specifically how to assess the intelligence of non co operational creatures, such as cats. It raises a few interesting points and most importantly, discusses the fundamental flaw of human judgement being swayed by human benefit.

Anyway, i just particularly liked this scenario:

An untrained cat and an untrained Border Collie dog are both presented with a group of ducklings. The dog herds the ducklings and protects them. The cat stalks the ducklings and eats one or more of them. Is the cat stupid because it doesn't look after the ducklings? Or is the dog stupid for not taking advantage of an easy meal?


I'd love to go on to talk about how this kind of dilemma sums up the dynamics of human society and relations within it.. but thats boring and shit, i dont have much to say, and you're all intelligent people who i'm sure already understand what i mean by that.

Incidentally, here's another article i saw on the subject of feline intelligence. Apparently their brains are structured just like ours.. no surprise there really.

Oh and here's a cute, topical pic: