One of 'longest ongoing wars' on the planet happens to be between two sections of population – the cat people and the dog people. Their intense battle over 'who is better?' — the dogs or cats — is likely to end, as recent studies have finally put a nail in the coffin.
Leaving many hurt, science has revealed that dogs are, in fact, smarter than cats.
Also read: Karnataka police officers save dog whose head got stuck in a pot [PHOTOS]
The journal Frontiers in Neuroanatomyhas accepted a paper for publication, where it's reported that dogs' brains have more than twice as many cortical neurons than cats' brains do. In simpler terms, these are the cells responsible for thinking, planning and other complex behavioural patterns.
The study was carried out by counting a number of cortical neurons in eight carnivorans – that happen to be a large class of mammals having teeth and claws that allow them to eat other animals; they are not to be confused with carnivores that are solely meat-eating animals, including humans.
The study revealed that dogs have about 530 million cortical neurons, while cats have about 250 million. Ouch - for every cat lover that loves to brag about their pet. Don't be disheartened, cheer up with this cuteness overload.
Suzana Herculano-Houzel, an associate professor of psychology and biological sciences at Vanderbilt University developed the method that the team of researchers used to count neurons.
She said: "I believe the absolute number of neurons an animal has, especially in the cerebral cortex, determines the richness of their internal mental state and their ability to predict what is about to happen in their environment based on past experience."
The paper also assessed the number of cortical neurons that can be crammed into a particular brain size and results stated that dogs have a much stronger brainpower than animals which actually have larger brain size.
This was explained in the paper, saying: "Large carnivorans appear to be particularly vulnerable to metabolic constraints that impose a trade-off between body size and number of cortical neurons."
But of course, the age-old debate is never between cheetah lovers and rabbit lovers, or even fish and birds. The arguments are always intense between cat lovers and dog lovers and it really makes one think how there are barely any service cats or bomb sniffing cats either, for that matter.
As Suzana, a self-proclaimed "100 percent dog person" claims, "At the least, we now have some biology that people can factor into their discussions about who's smarter, cats or dogs."
Cats can be sassy and bossy, but looks like dogs are ones that got the brains!
