Dog being used in the gender fashion. Male canines are dogs. Females are bitches. Dogs are easy-going, but complete idiots. Bitches are the smart ones. Why?
To be clear, your argument is that male dogs (the species) are stupider than female dogs? I don’t believe that is true. You’ll find both male and female dogs used as working dogs. Lassie, if I recall correctly, was famously a male underneath “her” luxurious coat.
If it makes you feel better about whatever is going on in your household today, however, I did find this one study that does point to gender-based differences in dog intelligence in at least one test.
Note that the researchers do not expect that this difference would persist across a range of tests.
Moved from GD to IMHO.
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No, when Lassie had to be smart she was a gurl. When she had to be pretty she was a boy.
My dear Lassie Pie was a seriously smart canine, but she warn’t much to look at.
In reality, the dog that played Lassie was male. So were all of his descendants who continued in the role.
I think maybe there’s more to these posts than meets the eye. Care to share there dropzone ol’ buddy?
Most working dogs are pretty smart. Most pet dogs are less so. Gender doesn’t have much if anything to do with it.
You learn something new every day on the internet. I thought dogs were boys and cats were girls. Background characters in Mickey Mouse cartoons, the men are always dogs (dog floppy ears and button noses), and women are often cats, but post-menopausal women become dogs, too – a biological phenomenon I never tried to analyze.
I have cats. Typically, I have 4-5 at a time. So, over the course of the last 4 decades, I have had a lot of cats. Some have been very bright, some less so. I have one right now that is so dim that I honestly believe that he must have some sort of developmental problem.
There is no doubt that intelligence is a spectrum in animals, humans included.
Why does the variation happen? Biology. Sometimes, biology is a cruel mistress.
The smartest dog I ever owned was a male golden/lab mix. The stupidest, by far, (and I mean seriously brain-dead idiotic) was a female mutt.
There always is. I’m stuck with him. Aussiedoodle. Smart for a dog, utterly charming, dumb as a rock. The Little Girls will smarten him up
But when the guy thought Lassie said “Come quick! The kids are stuck in the abandoned mine!”, I’m pretty sure he misheard, and what Lassie really said was “Bark! Bark!”.
My dog is so fucking stupid it takes him almost an hour to do an “easy” Sudoku!
Well, “lapdog” is a job too. It seems to depend on the type of job that breed was selected for (actually the other way 'round, dogs which were good at that job got assigned to it): some shepherd dogs will try to organize any group that looks organizable while ignoring attempts at making them fetch. Other dogs will respond at any attempt to make them run with a “you and what army, dearie?” look worthy of a dowager duchess (when said dog is a mastiff, you’d need a pretty decent army).
Confirmation bias?
I grew up on a farm with working dogs, border collies, and I never noticed any difference between dogs based on gender, certainly intelligence varied noticably but that had nothing to do with whether or not they had anything other than a tail between their legs.
I though this too when I was a kid. I’m pretty much ok now with dogs being either, but cats being boys still confuses me.
Animals don’t have gender. You mean sex.
Never noticed a difference based on gender, either. Our current dog (female lab/border collie mix) is smarter than some people I know, but there’s an equally intelligent male border collie at the dog park we go to, so… YMMV.
Gender and sex are often used interchangeably for animals.
To the extent a distinction is drawn, male and female dogs certainly have distinct behaviors and presumably mental states (gender) as well as biological sex.
It’s an interesting question whether dog gender and dog sex are always concordant. I’m not aware of any extensive formal research, but google “transgender animals” for some interesting anecdotes.
I have had mostly female dogs. They included our smartest dog (mainly manifested as a talent for getting into the refrigerator and garbage) and our dumbest (who could not find her way back to the house from the front yard).
I reject the idea that service dogs are the smartest. The difference is that they’re highly trained and motivated.