The goat is not stupid! A lot of people think the goat is stupid but they are wrong. Some people believe that the cat is dumb. This short article has been written to simply reinforce modern thinking that animals are not “dumb creatures” as some people still believe them to be. I hope, therefore, it serves to encourage people to respect animals and particularly the domestic cat as this website is particularly concerned with the domestic cat.
A recent study has found that despite the fact that the goat is considered to be witless, it is actually pretty clever. The study was carried out at Queen Mary, University of London. A group of goats were presented with a problem-solving task. The task was to release a tasty morsel of dried pasta from a box. Goats are particularly fond of penne pasta so there was plenty of motivation to solve the problem!
Although 3 goats were excluded because 2 of them head-butted the box instead of trying to problem solve, the remaining 9 goats were able to complete the task after about 11 attempts. In order to retrieve the pasta the goats had to firstly pull on a string and then tug on a lever. [Note: one goat was excluded because he could not do the task.]
The scientists who carried out the study said that the goats solved the problem remarkably quickly and that primates can easily take as long to solve this sort of problem. They were surprised by the goats’ intelligence.
An important part of this test was that the circumstances were not immediately relevant to a goat’s environment so it could be argued that it was a pure test of intelligence or a test of a more generalised intelligence.
Let us, therefore, never presume that an animal is a dumb creature and let us celebrate and respect the domestic cat who has never been considered as stupid as a goat and is certainly more intelligent than many people believe.
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animals are definitly not dumb they are quite clever in fact. who ever said they were dumb?
aww marc is she still missing? Hope shes ok where ever she is 🙁 Its great to have u back we all missed you. whats that big long word that u just spelled.
No, animals are not stupid, animals are born knowing what they need to know to be that particular, a goat doesn’t need a diploma to be a goat and surely if someone wants to give a goat some pasta they should just give him it and not make him pull strings in a laboratory to earn it, pointless tests like these make me angry, and worried about what else the damn scientists decide to do to the goats and what is their fate when the scientists move on to primates and other species to perform sometimes pointless and sometimes cruel and painful experiments, are they killed and chucked into the rubbish skip as so many other lab animals are.
Ofcourse, animals, especially cats, aren’t stupid.
I do question some other beingss like that dreadful snake my son has, frogs, rodents..
But, in their own way, they make it in the world.
Animals are not dumb, they just speak a different language to us and if we take the time we can understand them and realise they are equally as intelligent, if not more so, than humans.
People are gradually realising that! Late in the day.
Interesting – I suppose people anthropomorphisize(?) and assume character traits that conote stupidity in humans must be the same with animals.
….and clearly they would be wrong about that.
(I’m back 🙂 – sad though because of a lost young cat, Molly’s younger sister went missing)
Hi Marc, I missed you! I hope Molly’s sister turns up.
Are your cats all OK?
Oh, no, Marc.
I hope she turns up.
Hope you are OK and when you are ready we’d like to hear more. Good to have you back.
I hope she turns up safely Marc