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Seems like in many natural comparison pairs, one domesticated species is way more bred than the other Dog > Cat Horse > Donkey Sheep > Goat In each case the less-bred seems species “smarter” in a wild sense. The more-bred species may learn more tricks but is dumber overall 🤔
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I feel like this is overall not actually a good heuristic to use, but this is why all those anti-civ & anarcho-primitivist people keep talking about un-domesticating humanity...
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Sheep/goat and horse/donkey is particularly interesting given their closer taxonomic relationship (split ~4-4.5 million years ago) vs cats and dogs most recent common ancestor being ~43 million years ago
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Dogs are smarter than cats. We just devalue how smart they are because we can’t believe that they’re stupid enough to be down to do whatever we say. Cats decline, blankly, and we say “So cool! What are they thinking?” (Answer: “...fish...”)
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