On Dumb Dogs, Dumb Birds and Duplicitous Cats

It should be of little consolation to us that other animals are not as smart as we are.

I do not mean to write another essay on the intelligence of animals; whole libraries have been written on it, and I have contributed my share.

Anyway, given the superior intelligence it obviously has, our own species acts in such self-destructive ways that it has, in the long run, little to congratulate itself for.

We take addictive drugs, we have children we don’t want; we rape and murder one another; we neglect our children, we overeat, we kill ourselves in our cars, we poison the air and our lakes and streams, we make war, we steal, and, compounding it all, we believe in reincarnation, the notion evidently being that if we had a second chance we’d do better.

I mean to comment on the stupidity of other animals only as it has been revealed to me by creatures of my own acquaintance in the past few weeks.

Oddly, we like to wonder at the intelligence of dogs and horses, and are constantly making them the heroes of our myths. But horses are among the stupidest of animals, and dogs aren’t much brighter. I haven’t made up my mind yet about cats. Perhaps it is because they have so many human characteristics that one thinks of them as being smarter than they are.

For example, cats are duplicitous, greedy, insolent, predatory, selfish, pugnacious, lazy and utterly without morals; to that degree they are more human than most other species, but still not very bright.

That suggests to me that most of our human traits do not derive from our superior intelligence, but from our ignoble instincts. I don’t want this to degenerate into a pseudo-scientific paper. My conclusions are based only on my own observations, and to that extent they are scientific.

Take birds. For the last several days a bird has been pecking at the window just beyond my computer. I keep the blinds closed, to shut out the light, but that mirrors the window’s outside surface.

Why does this little bird spend hours every day pecking at the window? Obviously, it sees itself reflected in the mirrored surface and imagines that its image is another male, intruding on its territory. I assume the bird is a male because males are usually territorial, which causes male human beings to make war.

The point is, this little bird is too stupid to realize that there is no other bird. He is merely pecking at himself. Wouldn’t you think that this bird would sooner or later realize that he’s pecking at his own reflected image? After all, every time he pecks at the window his beak hits a hard surface, not another bird. I have an idea he will not give up until mating season is over.

Now take our dog, Suzie. She is a large light brown German shepherd type with black markings. Someone put her in our yard a few years ago. She is healthy, strong and alert. I assume that, for a dog, she is smart.

However, we have a problem with her that I think we wouldn’t have if she had even a minimum of self-preserving intelligence. Our entire yard is fenced, including a smaller portion that used to be the dog yard. But she keeps escaping. A couple of years ago I found that she was squirming under the chain-link fence around her yard. I paid $280 to have the fence extended underground. That stopped her for a while.

Now she is getting out again. We have given her the freedom of the main yard, thinking that might deter her. She gets out. We don’t know how. Neighbors are always phoning and telling us to come and get her. She can’t be trusted. Sometimes she seems to be getting out just for the hell of it. She doesn’t go anywhere--just turns up on the front porch.

In desperation we have had to tie her to a long cord in her yard--within reach of water and her doghouse. She doesn’t like it. At night we let her in, then tie her up again in the morning.

The point is, if she were intelligent, wouldn’t she realize that getting out is what causes her to be tied up?

Maybe she thinks she’s a cat.