choice when the experimenter pointed her finger. If the experimenter held her finger pointing at one container all of the dogs in the group (except one) chose accurately at a rate well above the level which would indicate simply guessing.
Cats Don't Get the Point
The performance of the cats was rather poor even for those select individuals who could be tested and did make choices. To quote the experimenters, "If you count failing to choose as an error cats did not perform significantly above chance."
Remember, these felines were not simply representative of all cats, but as the experimenters note, "We acknowledge that the cats in our study were probably more sociable than typical cats due to the requirement to interact with the experimenter during the habituation process."
The accuracy of the cats was abysmal, even using a relaxed criterion for scoring (namely not counting a failure to respond as an error). The experimenters summarized their overall performance: "Only three cats (7 percent) made a choice at least half of the time and were above chance at home and in the lab." That means that the remaining 93 percent of the group of cats tested were guessing, rather than gathering information about where the treat was based on where the experimenter was pointing.
Although these results do not resolve the issue as to whether dogs or cats are the more intelligent overall, it certainly indicates that when it comes to social cognition and the ability to respond to human communication, the performance of cats lags well behind that of dogs—even when you take into account the fact that many cats simply refuse to engage in the testing process.
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"That means that the remaining 93 percent
of the group of cats tested were guessing, rather than gathering information about where the treat was based on where
the experimenter
was pointing. "
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