Intelligence
Intelligence through behavioural observation is defined as a composite of skills and abilities. The WAIS test is a measure of intelligence in adult homo sapiens. The test scores on four criteria; verbal comprehension, perceptual organisation, working memory and processing speed. In a comparative evaluation from WAIS criteria, cats are generally fair in intelligence. The working memory of the domesticated cat is surmised from experiment as being 16 hours.
Factors that contribute to greater intelligence are the velocity at which electrical transmission is conducted and with the greater number of cortical neurons. The number of cortical neurons in the cat brain was calculated as 300 million. Compared to mammalian species this number was eleven-fourteenth in total.
Experimental results seemed to indicate that cats have no capacity for object permanence, as defined through investigation by J. Piaget with infants, further research made to identify a similar factor of cognition showed behaviour indicative of object permanence cognition, although of a different type to that identified initially by Piaget. Further research showed that the animal has an awareness of objects not directly available to sight, and also sensory-motor intelligence comparable with a two-year old child. In experimental conditions the memory of a cat was demonstrated as having an information-retention or recall, of a duration totaling as much as 10 years.
Observations have shown that cats can dream.
Read more about this topic: Cat Intelligence
Famous quotes containing the word intelligence:
“Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)
“All the old supports going, gone, this man reaches out a hand to steady himself on a ledge of rough brick that is warm in the sun: his hand feeds him messages of solidity, but his mind messages of destruction, for this breathing substance, made of earth, will be a dance of atoms, he knows it, his intelligence tells him so: there will soon be war, he is in the middle of war, where he stands will be a waste, mounds of rubble, and this solid earthy substance will be a film of dust on ruins.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“It is worth the while to detect new faculties in man,—he is so much the more divine; and anything that fairly excites our admiration expands us. The Indian, who can find his way so wonderfully in the woods, possesses an intelligence which the white man does not,—and it increases my own capacity, as well as faith, to observe it. I rejoice to find that intelligence flows in other channels than I knew. It redeems for me portions of what seemed brutish before.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)