September 1, 2009
Your Pets Are Smarter Than You Think!
Did you know that dogs have similar intelligence to a 24- to 30-month old child, while cats are considered to have the intelligence of an 18-month-old? According to psychologist and dog researcher Stanley Coren, the average dog has a vocabulary of about 165 words. Tests suggest that dogs also have some basic emotions — fear, anger, disgust and pleasure — but are missing some of the more complex emotions such as guilt. Coren suggests smarter dogs can count reliably to five and can spot errors in rudimentary arithmetic. They can also learn basic abstract geometric concepts such as big and small.
