CDJ withdrawn from paris

Cats do it too, albeit to a lesser degree than dogs. It's why dogs look like their owners and cats end up sounding like theirs.
There's at least three different pathways to domestication though and horses are on a completely different one to cats and dogs
 
FieldOrnaments said:
Cats do it too, albeit to a lesser degree than dogs. It's why dogs look like their owners and cats end up sounding like theirs.
There's at least three different pathways to domestication though and horses are on a completely different one to cats and dogs
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This reminds of a fact I heard (and please correct me if I am wrong) that cats only really meow to communicate with humans, not other cats!
 
Barklands said:
This reminds of a fact I heard (and please correct me if I am wrong) that cats only really meow to communicate with humans, not other cats!
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Yes exactly!!! They have different 'voices' for different people and different needs as well whereas a lot of the dog stuff I'm Dun mentioned is micro facial expressions that cats can't do
 
bonny said:
How would we know ?
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Well, from my own experience, when my cats meow it's when they are looking at me, there are no other cats around, and they want something.

Aside from warning growls, I've never heard any of my (numerous over the years) cats meow at another cat.

So I'd say we 'know'.
 
Barklands said:
I believe because they have been observed as not making meow sounds to other cats. They of course make other sounds such as chirping and hissing to other cats but apparently meowing is mainly just for us humans
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I’m not believing that ….neither are the very noisy cats hanging around my back garden !
 
Like a horse's nicker is a communication developed for between mare and foal. Of course they can and do use it for other purposes; human fingers didn't evolve opposable thumbs for the sake of smart phone usage but we can apply them to that just fine.
 
bonny said:
I’m no expert !
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They do make an assortment of sounds - generally the meow (which actually sounds like the word meow) is the sometimes pathetic-sounding one that is usually (always?) for humans. The noisy ones hanging round your garden may well be having disagreements and warning each other off, perhaps?

(In fact most of the audible communication I've heard between cats is defensive/negative.)
 
Smaller brains doesn’t always mean stupider, it just means they have different structures and/or lack certain structures we have. Smaller brains are also associated with a higher neurone density, so different bits of the brain communicate better with each other, otherwise known as greater intelligence. So don’t knock a small brain!

Their brains are relatively small compared to their body size, and they are smaller than human brains, but they’re not actually that small.

Realistically, the horse brain is too under-researched to make many assumptions. So we honestly can’t say what they do/don’t feel with any real certainty, because we don’t actually know, we also don’t understand brain processes generally that much, so we’re really just working with what we see. I think horses are capable of complex emotions, and I think they do understand pride, and feel certain emotions to different degrees, depending on the individual.

We do know that they don’t have a proper prefrontal cortex, so they don’t have dedicated impulse control and forward planning in the same way we do, but I strongly suspect horses can piggyback off other bits of their brain for some (limited) level of planning and impulse control (a bit like how humans who are missing a bit of brain can).

The comparison I think of when working with Erin is that most humans would much rather sit in front of the telly with a pizza and a glass of wine than go to work, but they have to go to work, and it’s generally not too bad, so they don’t mind that much, and the human gets to eat pizza in front of the telly after work anyway (if they want to). If the human is very poorly, they won’t go into work until they’re better. It’s the same with horses, they’d prefer to be stood in their field munching grass with a buddy, but they sometimes work, and it’s not really that bad (or at least, it shouldn’t be), then back to their field and their buddy. Again, if the idiot has tweaked a leg by being an idiot, they don’t work until they’re comfortably able to.

ETA: I just realised I posted this with 0 context, I also can’t find the quote, but it was something to do with horse brain sizes before the cat tangent (not that I don’t love a cat-related tangent 😄).
 
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