TEXTO:
Dogged determination
Sometimes scientists seem to be telling us what
we already know. Thus a recent study at Britain’s
University of Portsmouth determined that if you told a
dog not to take a piece of meat, then turned out the light
[5] so he thought you couldn’t see him, he’d likely steal the
food anyway.(I once lost half a Thanksgiving turkey like
that, but it was no experiment.) What the rigorous testing
done with scores of dogs of different breeds at
Portsmouth has proved scientifically is that our canine
[10] friends really do pay attention to what they’re doing — a
level of cognition that puts them ∈a category of
intelligence that can begin to be compared with primates.
“Dogs show some specialized skills ∈ how they read
human communications, says Juliane Kaminski, one of
[15] the authors of the Portsmouth study. “This seems to be
a direct result of selection pressures during
domestication.” To put it unscientifically, they’ve been
man’s best friend so long, it’s∈ their blood. Kaminski
says she doesn’t know of any similar studies done on
[20] felines. But, then, we already know cats don’t really give
a damn what humans think.
DICKEY, Christopher. Dogged determination. In “Big Think: Around the world ∈ six ideas.” Newsweek, Feb. 25, 2013. p. 9.
About cats, the text says that they
