Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Dogs vs. Cats

Douglas, Kate. "Dogs vs. Cats: The Great Pet Showdown." NewScientist. 09/12/09. Reed Business Information Ltd., Web. 9 Dec 2009. .

This article was about the two most famous house pets, the cat and the dog. To find out how good the feline or the kanine is, scientists unleashed a pack of experiments on the two. These pets had a competition in several different categories. These categories included the brain, shared history, bonding, popularity, understanding, problem solving, vocalisation, tractability, supersenses, eco-friendliness, and utility. Brain size is vital to the animals for their success. The kanine has a brain weighing in at an average 64 grams which is much bigger than the cats (25 grams), however in brain mass, the cat wins by a little. The cats have 300 million neurons in the executive brain, while the dogs only have 160 million. Cats and Dogs go a long way back and that's why scientists tried to figure out when did the cat and dog make it's first appereance. Scientists compared dog DNA to grey wolf DNA and found that the dog made it's first appereance around 50,000 years back. Then, the scientists looked at cats and found that they were significant in ancient Egyptian burials. Cats were finally traced to make their first appereance in a burial with a human in Cyprus 9,500 years back. Bonding with the owner is very important and that's why a dog is a man's best friend. Cats however are more popular than dogs because most want to get a cat as a pet. Dogs are more understanding though because they will figure out the thinking of the owner. Also, dogs can solve problems better than cats in critical situations. In terms of vocability, cats win because of their ability to "talk" to the owner. Dogs win in tractability because of the ability to train them easily for their knowledge. Cats win at the sense of smell because of their power of 45-64,000 hertz unlike the dogs 67-45,000 hertz. Finally cats are more eco-friendly because of their smaller paw-print of 0.15 hectares but dogs have the ability of better hunters and more mobility which enables them to fianlly take the prize.

This discovery helps the world to know the advantages and disadvantages of these famous house pets. Now, people will know in which categories their pet is superior in and in which not. So far, dogs may be in the lead, but scientists are always researching and categorizing these pets.

This article was very big in size but most paragraphs made it short by giving data and accurate statements. Everything was to the point and was clear about pets. The statements helped me work on my review of the article and at the same time I learned more of what seems to be an everyday topic. It's good that scientist finally are categorizing these pets to make it clear in which each category they are superior in.

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