Are Dogs smarter than Apes?

[Brion30]

I don't think so that dogs is smarter than apes..... is any member of the Hominoidea superfamily of primates, including humans. Due to its ambiguous nature, the term ape has been deemphasized in favor of Hominoidea as a means of describing taxonomic relationships.

 

And maybe you think that way, because of the TRAINED....and what about if the Ape be trained. Who else will be smarter. There is no facts that the ape was trained. Imagine that ape is second to human being, so the dog is smarter than human being?

[nerdasaurus]

There is no paradox. Dogs are domesticated, apes are not. It should come as no surprise that it may be more difficult to train an ape to do a task than it is to train a dog to do the same task if they are both biologically capable of doing it. However, I am not familiar enough with apes to know if this is an accurate statement. Regardless, the ability to easily train a member of a species is not an accurate measure of intelligence, at least when most people use the word. If you define intelligence to be "how readily and reliably an individual species responds to our wishes," then clearly dogs would be more intelligent then most other animals. This is not usually what others refer to when using the word intelligence though.

 

I would like to see examples of dogs performing complex mental tasks, such as abstract problem solving, planning, and self-awareness, to place them on a comparative scale of animal intelligence. All of your examples so far have been more along the lines of learned behaviors and pattern recognition.

 

Do you have an example of some of the "endless variations" that guide dogs are capable of? I am not aware of any trainers that claim to be able to train dogs to be able to deal with uniquely new circumstances. Again, sight dogs are an example of a very well trained dog that reacts to situations using learned behaviours, not abstract problem solving.

I agree 100% most listed examples are simple classical conditioning tricks centered around trained behavior. It even goes to pose the question do animals have emotion or do they simply have pre programmed responses that have been conditioned. For example, if you yell at a dog does it lower its tail and hide because it is sad or fearful? Or does it do this because it has been conditioned to associate your tone of voice with a following action? IMO, animals lack developed emotions and are simply conditioned to react to environmental stimuli.

[sman]

At Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona there are signs that say “Please, let coyotes feed themselves...” and go on to say how coyotes in the area have become accustom to the tourist presence & have adapted their behavior. They warn that in recent cases coyotes have been known to feign injury by limping or dragging a paw or the like to augment their panhandling success.

 

Now, who is smarter here, the canines with their deceptive behavior, or the apes responding with corn chips & apple fritters?

[HydrogenBond]

Apes are smart in their own way, but were not smart enough to form a cooperative relationship with humans, on their own. Dogs leanred to fit in with another species. This was possible because dogs can do jobs and not just tricks.

 

The herding dog has to make decisions in the field, while also dealing with a human chain of command while dealing with other species. He may have to figure out sheep, while also needing to know a little fox or wolf. You can bring the entire group to a new environment and the herd dog adapts to the unique circumstance.

 

I had a dobberman years ago. I placed her in a kennel so I could go on vacation. They put her in a 8ft high pen and within a few minutes, she was by my side again. We thought the gate was left open, so we locked her in and watched around a corner. What she did was climb the fence putting paws into the chain link fence holes and then run down tbe other side and come back to me. She figured that out in a minute. I never taught her that, nor had she ever left he yard, which had a 4ft fence. After that I told her to stay and she whined but stopped climbing. What this showed me was dogs have will power and can be taught to control some impulses.

Edited April 3, 2012 by HydrogenBond

[sman]

Apes are smart in their own way, but were not smart enough to form a cooperative relationship with humans, on their own.

 

Hydro.... You're an ape. I mean, you've gotta see the irony here, right? I doubt your old dobberman had similar thoughts about you.

 

To their credit, I've never known a dog to incessantly continue any unwanted or irritating behavior in the face of being scolded by it's masters. Every canine I've ever known has been smarter than that.

[7DSUSYstrings]

I have always assumed apes are at the top of the pile with respect to animal intelligence. But dogs appear to have accumulative intelligence features which add up higher than apes. The analogy is the ape can do physics but the dogs can do all the other subjects for a higher GPA.

 

One of the premium intelligence features of dogs is a dog can learn commands in any human language. They have linguistics skills. They can also filter through accents. One can raise a breed in Japan, send a pup to England and it will pick learn English. Send it from there, to southern America and they can adapt to the southern accent. They can even learn sign language. They can be taught to assist the blind, walking through busy city streets. Dogs are much better at working in teams. The number of skills that dogs can learn is very expansive.

 

I would like to see some references to dogs learning sign language.

[Eudoxus]

One species is naturally selected to have traits that humans find useful and co-evolves with humans for hundreds of thousands of years.

 

Another species is relatively isolated from humans for the same period.

 

 

 

Be wary of possible statistical and personal biases when trying to judge these species' cognitive capabilities.

[HydrogenBond]

One species is naturally selected to have traits that humans find useful and co-evolves with humans for hundreds of thousands of years.

 

This brings up a speculative theory I developed a while back. I will throw it out there as a subject of conversation. If others wish to develop it, fine. The theory is pre-humans and dogs co-evolved, with significant pre-human changes, away from the precursor ape connection, connected to humans learning from dogs.

 

For example, dogs are meat eaters. There are not a twig, berry and bug type animal, excedpt in an emergency. A long term cooperative relationship, means that meat will be easier to come by for pre-humans, due to their cooperative dog packs. The higher protein will change the brain. The pack will share.

 

A dog pack's ability to adapt to almost any environment, would also come in very handy for migrating pre-humans, teachuing them a thing or two. Dogs are good with other species of animals (humans-dog and dog-herds). Humans would also learn to cooperate with other animals, dogs, herds, etc. Dogs can learn jobs. This will be useful for human and needed for civilization.

 

Dogs react to human feelings more than they do the words. For example, if you say bad dog, but with a happy voice, the dog does not feel bad. If you say good dog, but with an angry voice, the dog will react to the anger. This is why dogs can appear to learn any language. Humans emotions are collective for all humans. This is useful before human language development or when language was very simple.

[HydrogenBond]

Here are a few fun pictures of monkey and dog friendship. This may be a good develop project for the creativity site. It is less technical and more humanistic.

 

http://www.interestings.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/dog-and-monkey-friendship-5.jpg

[7DSUSYstrings]

That is absolutely adorable :)

[maddog]

I would like to see some references to dogs learning sign language.

More to the point is how would a dog respond? Bark???

 

maddog