Your Kitty is not less than a Brainiac

Felines are one of the trickiest species, one that understands human behaviour quite differently and accurately than others. Their brain activity is better than dogs and closest to humans. However, from years it has been assumed that they stand lower than dogs in terms of intelligence, but this isn’t true. 

Their cerebral state is much larger than dogs and closest to humans. A feline’s brain covers approximately 0.91% of the total body mass that contains 300 million neurons or brain cells which coordinates the brain activities. It was thrilling when compared with dogs in a study that dogs have 160 million neurons and humans have 21-26 billion. Now, if we look into the straight facts, felines have the superior number and closest to the humans. They have been proven quite central at memory keeping, just like how we choose different memories and direct their path towards long-term or short-term circle, they do that too. Yes, they are not house-trained much if compared to the other species which gave rise to those assumptions about their intellectual abilities.

There are many ways to measure intelligence. These are a few that will help in reshaping the assumptions about cats in our minds:

1. We are all familiar with the term Problem Solving. Many of us work hard and get trained and develop this ability, but felines are born with this ability & if trained well, it will transform them into the intellectual living species. 
2. Feline parents must have noticed behaviour in their cats that they are always running and after something but you don’t see anything that they are after, do you? Well, it studied that cats have Object Permanence ability. And it was proved via study on animal learning and behaviour.
   What is Object Permanence?
   It’s an ability to see things or objects which can’t be sensed or visible by a human such as, the floating dust particles, the smell of hidden food and a lot more.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
3.  Observation is the key and felines can prove it right. Cats come in the   category of smart observers. They can watch their parents all day and   observe their behaviour, especially when one is grooming or even   opening a refrigerator. The next time you will see, they are in the action   mode. They will continue doing it till they learn to do it right.
4.  A feline can understand human gestures well. When they identify someone pointing towards a direction, they will pick at least one thing right. A study in 2005 proved this in which the researchers presented two bowls in front of a group of cats. One had food while the other was empty and obviously, the cat couldn’t see them because of the distance. The researcher pointed their finger towards the bowl that had food & soon the experiment proved to be a success because each cat identified the right food bowl & rewarded with the food.
   Portraying a similar objective, a study in 2019 proved that even when gazing at a specific spot, cats acted in the right direction. They passed the test of identifying a human gaze successfully that shows quite an interesting example of their cognitive mindset.                                                                                                                                                                   
5. In 2017, a study proved that felines don’t always interact with their caregivers or human parents because they need food. It studied the preference of a cat for social interaction with the other attractive stimuli such as food, scent and toys. It proved that cats love the company of their caregiver.
   In 2019, there was another study to understand whether they like to bond with their caregiver or not. They were put in a room with their parents for two minutes and then they were left alone without them. When their parents returned after the two minutes interval, they showed utmost affection. It cleared the fact that cats love to spend more time with their caregiver or human parent of they are giving them attention. They like attention and are the attention seekers.
6. Service Cats: Well, that’s true, not only dogs can be the service animals, cats can be too. It happened in the late 19th century, the Belgian Society trained cats to successfully deliver the messages which were kept in the waterproof bags, attached to their neck. They use to travel around the Belgian villages to transport the note and return. They completed the job in 24 hours where the quickest cat covered the distance in 5 hours. Later, pigeons were used to do the job as they were fast. It got covered in The New York Times.
      Now that we are on the same page, all the assumptions about cats have been proved wrong & it turned out, they hold a better amount of intelligence in terms of overall perspective. They are born with the ability to learn new information, blend it with the existing and utilise all these in the required situations. They are cute and cuddly and most of all they have a stand for intelligence. How their cognitive mindset work is still undergoing different researches & we are definitely over the fact that they never fail to surprise us. It is not wrong to say that they are a Brainiac. A few types of research went well, but others just failed, not because cats failed but because they didn’t participate in it thanks to their well-formed and decision-making brain.