Are you a cat or a dog person? Which is best?

Things mentioned in this podcast:

• Moral Foundations Theory
• PDSA Animal Wellbeing Report
• Who’s Smarter: Cats or Dogs? Psychology Today
• Cats are just as loyal as dogs
• Dogs share food

Will your dog or cat eat you when you die? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/06/pets-dogs-cats-eat-dead-owners-forensics-science/

• Cat social behaviour
• Evidence of dog altruism

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Sara Nonu, Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing which are better cats or dogs. Okay so I'll start off so I have some so I'd always been a dog person but then I had my own first time I'd ever had my own dog about a couple of years ago and sadly we had to sort of return him to the rescue home where we got him from and that's for very specific reasons that were related to him being a greyhound which meant I couldn't actually take him for a walk really. None of his jackets matched yours. Yes there was yeah he didn't look so good my Instagram profile when I was taking it yeah um and so anyway for various reasons which were not really dog related they were greyhound related we had to return him which was very sad for everyone anyway uh my wife is very wait what I'm gonna want to drill into this well we can do we can do yeah carry on um and my wife has always been a cat person um and about a year or so ago we got a cat which I was very dubious about and and so now we've got this cat um lurking around our house and I have to admit to a begrudging affection for him and his cat ways um and so what be his name his name is Lennox Lennox the cat Lennox the cat um Lenny to his mate yeah Lenny um and he's a charming little fellow um but anyway I mean I'm sure we'll go into a little bit more about why why not um but yeah it just got me thinking which do I it was an existential thing you know which do I really really um like or which are better cats or dogs and I still think it's dogs um but I can't help but have you know it's it's wavering a little bit um let me listen to the podcast because we just lost a listener yeah he probably does quite secretly yes yeah um so yeah as a cat he probably doesn't care what you think well I think you yeah you summed it up quite well there actually he doesn't give a toss what I think about anything um um so yeah that's more or less what I think I still prefer dogs um I can yeah I mean I can see Sara Nonu tell me Sarah what I said Sarah Nonu sorry sorry I can see Sarah nodding um yeah you look like a dog person Sarah tell us about dogs and why they're so great and why they're better than cats I'm absolutely a dog person

um well when I tackled this I looked at it three different ways I looked at it from a personal preference in terms of a lifestyle choice and then thirdly when I was doing a bit of research was biological and evolutionary oh okay so I took it down three roads uh the dogs never seemed to really win out that much except maybe in terms of um lifestyle choices depending on what you want a dog for yeah um but yeah it's absolutely dogs for me hands down big dogs too not little

ones what's the gist of those three what was the sort of gist of the your your inquiries down those three routes uh the evolutionary one for example what was what were you thinking about there so

when I was looking at that turned out that um from an evolutionary standpoint cats are better than dogs in what sense so this makes no sense it it doesn't but um predatory so it's predatory creatures okay they're better than dogs uh and if I turn to my notes well just while you look at

your notes but I mean do you mean like they're more successful at killing things they're more

successful so basically when dogs cats were introduced to North America about 20 million years ago apparently um they ended up declining the dog population in certain species of dogs

right so they sort of outcompeted the dogs yeah but then dogs are still here right so they must

work in some niches it's just different species so some species of dogs hunt like more like cats

which doesn't actually work for them is it fair to say that wild dogs or the evolutionary version

of a dog is a wolf yes our dogs basically wolves and other little smaller things like dingoes and um what the americans jackals jackals is is your hyena a dog I think a hyena is a cat no hyena is a dog is it no but hold on look right we're already speaking zoologists we have no idea what's going on here I'm surprised about the evolutionary thing yeah but but but the reason why is of course uh dogs are domesticated and have been for thousands of years as a cat actually but um so actually from an evolutionary point of view we've bent evolution um to make sure that dogs suit us and they do certain things and so that's why I think a broad evolutionary um viewpoint doesn't work because actually we've managed to sort of um you know rig the game and there is one key

key difference between cats and dogs which have helped in terms of evolution and that is cats have uh retractable claws so therefore they don't wear them out as much so they're better hunters

their dogs are it's one step towards having an opposable thumb isn't it probably so you know they're probably top cap scientists right now working on this yeah but restricted by the fact

that they haven't got opposable thumb um Peter um I think I know Nick's views on this Peter what weigh in I'm pretty indifferent I'm not a big pet person at all I would take a lot of convincing to get me to take on a pet um but the pet but if I had to choose if my arm was twisted I think I'd probably be a dog person I um and it would my favorite kind of dogs are the smarter ones right the the working dogs so the search dogs uh the guard doggy type dogs um so a medium to large type dog um uh there's something noble about a working animal uh horses yeah have you heard of a working cat well can but cats I mean we bred cats as working animals to hang around and sort of

keep the rats and mice the cats are doing it for themselves really aren't they whereas you get the feeling that working dogs like actually like working in a team with yeah yeah you get that sort of team team yeah like what is in it for those huskies right the amount of effort they put in what's in it for them you couldn't get a cat to pull a sled yeah no god knows we've tried yeah

um I still want to return to a couple of Sarah's points um but first of all Nick what are your

views on this cats versus dogs well I I I would not have a pet because of the pain in the arse factor um get a cat I yeah well the thing is that okay I have looked at multiple dimensions here right of sort of different differences in behavior it wouldn't be fair to apply human standards to the animals but that is nevertheless what I've done and I've tried to answer the question you know what which which one is better from from a sort of human values point of view yeah um before I get to that though I mean very top level right if I think about the number of times I've been annoyed by a dog compared to the number of times I've been annoyed by a cat it is orders of magnitude greater right gonna be the dog dogs the slobber the the bites the noise that they make the woofing we've had podcasts disrupted by dogs for example we've never had a podcast disrupted by a cat and of course the poo yeah yeah which round here you know there's a lot of dog poo now you can say it's not dogs but there's no cat poo the cats are out there their cats could be doing cat poo in the in the alleyway if they want it but they don't so I'd say 100 to 1 ratio but this is offset by them nuzzling at your crotch we'll get to that in a minute uh well that as well right so so annoyed by dog to annoyed by cat I'd say at least 100 to 1 ratio okay now delighted by a dog versus delighted by a cat okay how many times have I been you know felt joy in seeing the way they behave it's about evens so the the nuisance to sort of benefit ratio the cost benefit ratio of a dog is is a hundred times lower than it is for a cat right so so right off cats are winning but here's my analysis so what I do it did I looked at a thing called the um a sort of five moral foundations theory or model rather which Jonathan Haidt and various other psychologists have developed and it basically says that human values can be boiled down to sort of five fundamental things that we care about which are care which is essentially cherishing and protecting others fairness or proportionality which is about sort of being I can see where this is going having shared rules not cheating loyalty so loyalty to your in-group and I guess family nation that kind of thing authority and respect so respect and compliance with authority and sanctity or purity which is about sort of a boring disgusting things and you know cleanliness in food and those kinds of things those are the five moral foundations now take them each in turn care there is actually mixed you might think that dogs are going to run away with this because dogs seem very pro-social yeah dogs they seem giving yeah and um and whereas cats don't appear not to give a shit but having said that there is evidence that that's not really true that actually the way that cats we don't really know but the way that cats express that that kind of the the concern they have for people could just be different right it could just be less human because we've bred dogs to show us human styles of of ways of caring that's the thing we've selected them on that basis now um cats we haven't uh big probably because I suspect because you you can't for some reason um so but I think dogs have the edge here you know you you you can imagine you take the case of Greyfriars Bobby who famously waited at his master's grave for years you know you can't imagine a cat I mean a cat would would eat you wouldn't it yeah um having said that there is some evidence that dogs uh also eat their owners when they're they do yeah lots of sudden deaths discovered

by policemen if there's a dog in the house then it's going to be a bit of a mess and apparently

they eat your face they don't eat like the the innards which they would if you were an animal they'd killed so it's a bit weird so step one does it eat your face dogs are losing no I uh so I think dogs have the slight edge there fairness now and this comes out of hunting um methods I think ultimately yeah humans obviously are pack hunters dogs are pack hunters uh they you will inevitably have sharing norms when you have pack hunters cats are individual hunters you know they're not alone um and uh there is no sharing like norm with cats um dogs win on that one loyalty now again apparently loyalty is something where uh when they've attempted to test for it actually it's a bit of a toss-up between cats and dogs it could be potentially a draw which seems weird but in terms of like will they stay with you if given the choice um apparently you know it's not as biased in in favor of the dog as you might think authority and respect no doubt that the dog uh has more of a sense of that dogs are hierarchical in a way that cats aren't cats do form sort of spontaneous groups um but they're not very hierarchical and they're very fluid uh cat social groups um and it's the it's the the queens as they're called the lady cats who do that male cats don't do that at all they they male cats don't have social groups as such um by which you conclude that top cat is dog is a female oh sorry yeah um and then finally sanctity and purity does it poo everywhere and not clean it up the cat is way ahead here so it's dog three cat one and a toss-up for the other if you are purely looking at which one is more scores more highly as a human a dog is more human than a cat um there we are well that's that's sort of the the but then it you know we might want to think about which do how much do we value that do we want our pet to be a sort of stupid slobbering human

or do we actually want it to be something different yeah yeah because you got at least one too many slobbering humans in your life so yeah yeah um so sarah i just want to research some of yours we talked about um that was a nice breakdown i like that and it explains why we we we like dogs more than cats i think or why i think more people are dog people than cat people uh but sarah you talked about the evolutionary thing we've talked about a little bit um um and then the other one

was lifestyle and what was the other one the other one was just personal preference okay so

let's talk about the lifestyle i mean cats are winners on that one right well i guess it depends

on you as an individual if you want a more active lifestyle and you want to be outside well a dog would be much more suited to that the cat isn't stopping you from going for a run no but i'm

saying it could go with you yeah a dog is also the dog is a reason for you to go as well yeah um

and you can also take it away with you when you want to go away i mean you could take your cat away but who really wants to take a cat away not me personally no but i'll take my dog if i had one actually this is one of the problems you don't like cats someone who likes cats my auntie

loves her cats and takes them everywhere she goes yeah we need a strong cat person here yeah

well i'm i'll be the cat person if we need to nominate one yeah okay um well i mean just about the lifestyle thing this was the problem i had when we had this dog which was i was like great this is going to turn me into that person who goes out for walks and sort of meets other people with dogs and chats and this outdoor healthy lifestyle um that didn't happen just because the dog was just such a nightmare to take for a walk and just wanted to kill everything inside i think i think you don't understand is that you need greyhound problem is it for you well it isn't as much as um it was just when i was picking this dog up cedric um they said oh i only it was only when they said oh you'll be lucky if you ever get him off the lead was he in x racing he was an x yeah so i could i just couldn't can beat pete with like 10 15 000

years of breeding no but i don't think you understand what dog person means let me let me finish what you're saying is you're a dog person who doesn't really like any of the

associated with dogs hold on let me finish an x racing dog is very different from an actual like

right exactly dog yeah yeah and and so every time we took him out the park um you know i couldn't let him off the lead and he just was there just straining this huge greyhound which i'd being a dog he's being he's being a greyhound he's being a greyhound yeah it was not his fault

all dogs i've never seen a dog not straining at the leash when it gets into a park i mean come

on no no no they all want to go for a run they want to get a stick exactly he wanted to go front i couldn't let him off because he would just kill every terrier in sight um train to

chase the fluffy thing in yeah the fluffy thing the worst thing was there was this woman who used to

walk her dogs there all together which was about six or seven little fluffy yappy things um and which were always on a lead and my dog cedric would see them and it was just you know it's just like five really loud rabbits being held back by leads and he just went mental and i yeah i just couldn't do so i did not so actually i started taking for walks less and so then it added guilt into my life um or more guilt into my life yeah and i think animals have very different temperaments dogs especially so yeah and i think i got the wrong

dog yeah that's it it depends on the breed right you need to find the breed of dog that fits in

with your lifestyle exactly uh well just oh let's hear from peter just want to channel you said that people like dogs more than i like cats right that's on this right go for it according to the pdsa which is an animal charity uh they they have an annual report get this it's a pdsa animal well-being report the poor report brilliant um they they they give they break down stats about ownership and things so 50 of uk adults with a pet okay uh 24 of adults have a cat giving us about uh 10.9 million cats in the uk yeah uh 26 percent have dogs so they're pretty close in terms of overall population so that's 9.9 million dogs just put it in context before you continue i just want to say all those cat owners would probably rather have a dog but they just can't because of lifestyle reasons but keep going uh uh well until there's two percent of adults have a rabbit so just just put that in context so there's quite a lot of dogs and cats and rabbits so i i think i think of that as a nice sort of strategic food reserve but um uh but there's a lot there's quite there's a lot of animals in in and around the human population so it's like um uh they're popular to buy online popular but dogs and cats are some equally popular in the uk okay okay well you say that but like i say i think i mean i've got a cat for lifestyle reasons i think and i've just developed some affection for him but really i'd much rather have a dog um where are we going with this i mean so sarah but let's give us in one sentence why you

prefer dogs companionship i think i think it comes back to those human qualities that they have i that's something i would prefer over a cat who just kind of sits in the corner i'd rather have something that's a bit more interactive more affectionate more affectionate more happy to see

me when i come home yeah yeah yeah you're obviously you're obviously a very neurotic

and needy person but this is what this is what and you're a typical cat person that's what people

say because no listen because i'm i'm by sort of um constitution very libertarian and i highly value self-sufficiency like i really encourage that in my kids i get i get i feel very claustrophobic with people who kind of can't look after themselves and need you know need kind of need needy kind of people you know and i i uh so i that's why i really have much more respect for the cat outlook on life the cat isn't going to sit there and just slavishly give you affection but you have to realize that the dog has been bred to do that it doesn't love you it would love you if you were horrible to it so that is meaningless it's meaningless uh because it's not given through choice it's given through you know millennia of evolution whereas when the cat comes and sits on your lap and purrs that you know it means it and i think i i would go with that see i mean that's that's why i have to i just respect cats you couldn't respect a dog how can you respect a dog they're tragic they sit there slobbering slavishly looking for attention desperate to be a cat is its own master and i and i you know you yeah that's it really i think i think it comes down to that i just i just don't respect dogs yeah i pity them so actually when when a cat

does that and and apparently when it goes to someone and purrs in self-interest and so when it purrs away and it's actually it's actually even though they're not as hierarchical as dogs it's still actually going to what it perceives as like the head honcho and trying to get into their good books apparently one two actually what we're talking about how how on earth you would know that i don't know but to carry on research research research i did um the second thing is you know um off the back of your uh polemical rant is the um is actually what we're talking about here i think is is is not cats versus dogs but cats people versus dogs people okay because actually some of the you know if i sort of walk around in life and sort of the people i and although you've you you've unfairly maligned these people as being needy and so on um cat people tend to just to be a bit nasty they're not as nice they're more self-serving um yeah yeah yeah yeah

well never heard of a crazy like dog person right it's all the crazy people it's the crazy cat

people is i think there's probably i'm i'm i might even be persuaded that that could be true definitely true but i i would like to see some correlation in personality types with and i i haven't looked so i don't know if it's there but i'm going to boldly claim that there is going to be some correlation quite a strong correlation with either one of the big five personality types you know uh personality dimensions or with things like your myers-briggs type or something i i think there's gonna i i would i would not be surprised to discover it's there yeah yeah yeah um but but yeah i i suspect it may well be uh you know the sort of it could could be the neuroticism line it could be something something to do with that you know it's kind of to do with correlation with you know need for need for affection and stuff like cat people are less likely to need that but yeah i mean but you're also you're assuming that nice is good and i'm not sure that's necessarily the case

but nice is nice um and that goes a long way um look i mean i'm quite surprised actually we're actually fairly near to the end of this um i still don't feel i think we needed a cat person but i

think i think nick is actually he's basically a cat person i i don't want to come over as anti-dog because you know for you called them slobbering needy i i i know but the for the actual dogs themselves like i don't i i get where they're coming from and i you know i don't hate them as individuals i've hate i hate what evolution is or what what artificial selection has made them made them become but you know uh it's a you would you know if we genetically engineered people to want to be slaves um would how would we feel about them i'd feel sad that that we had done that and that those people had no minds of their own well that's dogs well not if you were also one of those

genetically in in uh engineered people um you'd be quite happy with things but that's a whole other yeah that's um that's uh we're getting brave new world style yeah but i'm doing what i'm saying

is that that's what dogs are that's that that is my feeling towards them is not i don't despise them

yeah but you can't get past your own cattiness um so look we need to we need to we need to finish this off i think actually um i don't think we've quite got to it but peter i'd like just to explore a dimension that i mentioned is is important to me is smarts how clever they are uh i want you know i want somebody i want a companion that's that's that's an equal uh not not just a slave um so so this is a matter of controversy as you might imagine like which is smarter the domestic cat or domestic dog uh so a couple of studies um the vanderbilt university um they published a study a neurological focus study which suggests that dogs have vastly more um around double the uh the the cortical neurons which are responsible for the problem solving and abstract thinking and planning and things you get in mammals uh than cats do um so that dogs are around 530 million cortical neurons put that in context humans have 16 billion so they've they've got twice as much as cats so they've got more machinery for being smart okay um but obviously a lot less than than we do however other studies um which uh are more behavioral uh studies uh indicate that actually dogs are not exceptional um over cats in terms of their their capacity their ability for associative learning um their capacity for their senses in terms of sense of smell and and uh and taste um their physical cognition of eyes of how they can find their way around and understand the physical world um so they're not actually when tested they're not actually exceptional compared to cats so uh the jury's out basically but they're both stupid right by human standards none of them is

gonna win mastermind yeah exactly yeah yeah i think um actually intriguingly one of the very earliest sort of uh thought experiments that i'm aware of about animal intelligence goes back about i think it's about two and a half thousand years god it's called chrysippus's dog and it was a suggestion by this by chrysippus as to how we could check whether dogs were intelligent and he said if a dog is on it is tracking someone by their smell and it gets to a crossroads and it and it and it checks for the smell in the first two roads and can't find it it shouldn't check for the smell in the third uh the third road it should just know that that's the way the person went and if dogs did that it would prove that there was animal intelligence and apparently that's true dogs do do that yeah interesting historical sidelight there nice little shout

out for the doctor at the end uh look just to finish things off um whereas i mean a cat wouldn't

just wouldn't do it well i can i could i could find it but they want it yeah it's nap time

okay just to finish this off um imagine a world with no cats or dogs um but you want to have a pet okay um what pet would you go for and why and you would probably go for canine like dr who's electric he built his own dog yeah boston dynamics dog uh no i i i think i would i've always quite liked the idea of being a falconer oh yes i like yeah there's something very exciting about eagles and owls and predatory birds they're they're quite cool yeah my cousin is a falconer of long standing and um yeah what he likes about him he said is he likes their wildness is that although it feels like we've got some kind of control over them but yeah they'll just they'll just yeah they'll go when they want to go yeah um yeah nice answer uh sarah i would go for a shetland pony okay there you go another i just picked cute things dog size fours yeah i pretty

much picked cute things that's why i think dogs over cats one is that they're cuter there's more variety as well but yeah shetland pony it's cute nice that or a baby monkey okay

yeah baby monkey yeah that was and then just every six months change it out right yeah i need it i need a baby so yeah it's got to be cute and little yeah do you want to be a monkey breeder possibly

one yeah okay great thing is i like would want a baby monkey and i want to shoot like a shetland pony but i want a big dog i don't want a little dog i'd like a long hair german shepherd is my

ideal dream dog a horse sized dog or a dog sized horse yeah that's pretty much it yeah it's an

internal debate yeah uh nick i like bears okay i i i really respect the bear i think out of out of all animals the bear is my favorite they're very domesticated well i know i doubt it um but and the part that's partly why i like them i think i think i'd want i'd want you could keep it on a chain in your garden a bear is like a great big furry version of a deadly horrifically uh terrifying version of a cat you know kind of fairly solitary but a little bit social you know they sleep for a long time like that's always appealed to me and uh yeah they're just they you know they're kind of they're cuddly looking but but you know deep down they're terrifying it's like an iron iron fist in a velvet glove a bear isn't it okay nice yeah i like that

um i think i would go for i go for ants i think because i know they're not they're not massively cuddly um but um by all accounts they're fascinating um and that's what i need to get hold of actually is what do you call it where ants live a colony no no no it's called an ant farm no no well i mean it is an ant farm but it's got a proper name like like an aquarium but right not with the water formicularium yeah something like that um you know and apparently they're fascinating this is a biologist yeah but you did say a pet so you're only allowed one end they wouldn't survive very long that's a good point actually well there we go one ant one ant that's what i'd go for um okay we'll stop there um i feel this debate will rage on i don't think we've quite put it to bed um but thank you as always for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast i'm Fraser McGrew been here with Sara Nonu, Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights until next time goodbye