# Are horses smarter than dogs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 8, 2006, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-horses-smarter-than-dogs/339049 "2006-01-08T21:48:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-horses-smarter-than-dogs/339049/61 "2015-09-02T17:50:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Urbanredneck** : > > Then how come I’ve heard so many stories about how a horse figured out how to undo a latch or a gate and get out of there stalls? I’ve met and witnessed plenty of dogs do the exact same thing. Nobody considers it remarkable when a dog does it. To be fair, horses are on the smart side for herbivores, and _much_ smarter than most domesticated herbivores. That’s probably largely because of the reasons why we keep them. Cows, sheep, and chickens keep busy on a cellular level: All we expect of them is to metabolize food and turn it into useful (to us) proteins. Horses, though, we expect to actually do jobs, even if most of those jobs are done with someone much more intelligent sitting on their back. A horse needs to be smart enough to follow orders. Dogs, however, are often expected to work independently. You don’t need to micromanage a dog. Dogs are officers, where horses are enlisted. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-horses-smarter-than-dogs/339049/62 "2015-09-02T19:39:29Z")
nvm ---
**Author:** ![Renee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/renee/32/287_2.png) [@Renee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renee)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-horses-smarter-than-dogs/339049/63 "2015-09-02T20:38:20Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > ETA: Let me put it to you: would a horse be smart enough to fake being cold? I think not. [Drama horse fakes death to get out of work.](http://www.horsecollaborative.com/horse-plays-dead-to-get-out-of-work/) I think dogs are smarter than horses (I have both) but you can train horses to do some really complex things. The big problem with training horses is that they’re afraid of fucking everything. This is worse in some horses than others. If you’re interested in the subject, there is a documentary, _Wild Horse Wild Ride_ that’s about a competition where trainers take wild mustangs and train them, then compete. It’s pretty amazing what these guys can accomplish with a feral animal in such a short time. I wonder how a similar thing would turn out with feral dogs? ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-horses-smarter-than-dogs/339049/64 "2015-09-02T21:55:15Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Then how come I’ve heard so many stories about how a horse figured out how to undo a latch or a gate and get out of there stalls? Whatever else their smarts or lack thereof, this somehow seems to be a special forté of some horses. When I lived for 10 years in a guest house on a small horse ranch, we had one mare who was a unstoppable Horse Houdini. One day, apparently when she couldn’t get a latch open, she just physically grabbed the gate and ripped it off its hinges. Nobody actually saw that happen, but we found the gate and (with some digging around) the hinge parts laying nearby in the sand, and Horse Houdini pigging out in the oat barrel. ---
**Author:** ![Renee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/renee/32/287_2.png) [@Renee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renee)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-horses-smarter-than-dogs/339049/65 "2015-09-02T22:01:48Z")
I think that anecdote speaks to the stupidity of most horses. They could brute force their way into a lot of things that they don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2015, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-horses-smarter-than-dogs/339049/66 "2015-09-03T03:08:07Z")
> [@Haldurson](#): > > But I can talk about the poodles I’ve owned. … She also was a genius when it came to untangling her leash > [@gnoitall](#): > > Ah, poodles. > My childhood poodle was a near-genius at manipulation. Not manipulating the environment, manipulating the family. The general ranking of dog intelligence is: - herding breeds - hunting breeds (hunting & terrier types) - hunting breeds (retrievers & flushers) - guard breeds - tracking breeds (scenters, sighters, & pointers) - companion & toy breeds (Though there is a lot of disagreement over exact ranking of these groups, and even which dog breeds are in which group. And a whole lot depends on how you define ‘intelligence’.) But the poodle is (or was originally bred for) a hunting breed. (The odd poodle haircut was originally done to allow them to move through marshes & fields without getting so much debris caught in their coat.) So poodles would be toward the upper end of the dog intelligence scale. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2015, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-horses-smarter-than-dogs/339049/67 "2015-09-03T03:15:47Z")
> [@Renee](#): > > I think that anecdote speaks to the stupidity of most horses. They could brute force their way into a lot of things that they don’t. Or, it speaks to the astounding degree of docility bred into domesticated horses. Horses are way too powerful that they should take any shit from people at all, and it just always amazes me to see how docile _most_ of them are. Or, maybe it speaks to how secretly smart they really are, to be so docile that these two-legged creatures will feed them and take care of them and cater to their every need. :dubious: 🙂 Or, yeah, they really are dumb. ---
**Author:** ![dba\_Fred](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c37758/32.png) [@dba\_Fred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dba_Fred)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2015, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-horses-smarter-than-dogs/339049/68 "2015-09-03T12:46:25Z")
A dog was smart enough to get us to name his species, when spelled backwards, is: God. Horse spelled backwards is: Esroh. Plus a dog wouldn’t put up with the indignity of being unnamed but we all know about A Horse With No Name, liable to end up in the desert where there were plants and birds and rocks and things … ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2015, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-horses-smarter-than-dogs/339049/69 "2015-09-03T14:26:45Z")
But in the desert you can remember your name, 'cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain. ---
**Author:** ![MacLir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@MacLir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacLir)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2015, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-horses-smarter-than-dogs/339049/70 "2015-09-03T14:57:58Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > We had a treat machine which the dog could get a treat from by hitting a bar with his paw. Our border collie figured it out in under ten seconds. The Lab never did, though the border collie tried to teach him. I made a cat feeder similar to that - to keep the dog out of the cat food. 😉 One cat never caught on, but it was OK. The other cat fed it. No joke - I saw it happen. He would work the operator a few times and then step aside to let the other cat eat it. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2015, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-horses-smarter-than-dogs/339049/71 "2015-09-10T18:19:00Z")
> [@Hello\_Again](#): > > Damn that graph didn’t come out at all. Let me try again > > |\<-----------------------------------\>| Dogs > > …|\<----------------------\>| Horses In plain text, the browser compresses spaces, so you can’t use them to make blank space. If you want to do that, put it in [noparse] ```auto ``` [/noparse] tags. ```auto |<----------------------------------->| Dogs |<---------------------->| Horses ``` > [@KCB615](#): > > I _have_ seen my lab bring me a rabbit (alive and fighting), a mockingbird (alive, fighting not-so-much), and several mice (none alive) while off-leash in an open back yard. It could be the retriever instincts, but it seemed to be more of a “here, I brought these for you” thing, given the look on her face and the tail wag when she dropped them off. Those two aren’t mutually exclusive. Retriever instincts mean catch and return safely. Wanting to do something for you, the alpha, means acting at that time. > [@dre2xl](#): > > The facts out of the way, my speculation is that dogs have a very flat bell curve compared to cats. You see a whole lot of dogs that are dumber than corn, and you see a whole lot of dogs that are amazingly smart. Let’s see, amplitude is headcount, spread is deviation from the norm, or amount of intelligence. Assuming headcount is irrelevant, you compare equal sample sizes, then a flatter bell curve means a wider spread. So yeah, that’s a fair way to describe the process. Just checking. > [@purplehearingaid](#): > > [http://www.thetoptens.com/smartest-animals/](http://www.thetoptens.com/smartest-animals/) > according to the web site they think dogs are smarter. That site is a joke - it’s voted by children. They have Dogs higher than Chimps. I wouldn’t give that any weight at all. > [@kayaker](#): > > [http://vid681.photobucket.com/albums/vv174/kayaker01/Kali.mpeg\_zpswzgogrw4.mp4](http://vid681.photobucket.com/albums/vv174/kayaker01/Kali.mpeg_zpswzgogrw4.mp4) > > One of Kali’s tricks. > > ETA: ? Plays on my tablet, but not my laptop. That’s not stacking river rocks, which was the claim. Opening an unlatched gate is nothing. Heck, I had a cat that would open doors from the inside by reaching under and pulling. Some of our doors didn’t latch, so that technique worked. > [@Renee](#): > > [Drama horse fakes death to get out of work.](http://www.horsecollaborative.com/horse-plays-dead-to-get-out-of-work/) Careful, or that horse will learn about the glue factory. Or horse meat is legal. > [@](#): > > I wonder how a similar thing would turn out with feral dogs? Establish dominance over the feral dogs, then they’ll respond to you like any dog. Pack behavior. I had a lab that would climb. He tried to follow me up a ladder into a tree once. I couldn’t keep him in chainlink fences. Had an English setter that shared time with him, that dog never learned to climb. Opening unlatched gates is nothing, as I mentioned, my cat did that. Had a lab that learned to unlatch the gate to pull it open. Had to keep a clip in the latch. I had a cat that would bring prey and drop it for us as gifts. When she got old, she started retrieving socks from my dad’s dresser. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-horses-smarter-than-dogs/339049.md?page=3)