Us animals aren't as dumb as you may think....

My mum gets this magazine called New Scientist delivered to her every week. Apparently she unwittingly subscribed to it when she was surfing the net one day looking for a new pair of shoes, and it’s been posted to her ever since. Uncle Hugh reckons she keeps the subscription up because she wants to prove that she’s not your average blonde. He says she can’t understand anything they talk about in it but she likes to look at the pretty pictures. Mum tells him to ‘…bollocks…” when he laughs at her looking at it.

Yesterday she was talking about something that she’d read in New Scientist and had almost understood. She said that some scientists were trying to find out if certain animals could ponder the past and contemplate the future. Uncle Hugh reckoned that I probably could ‘…a tad…’. A TAD? PERRLLEASE! Then mum had the cheek to say, “Don’t be stupid. He’s a dog. Dogs only know the here and now. Everything they do is merely instinctive. Everybody knows that dogs are basic creatures…..” and I’m sat there thinking “HELLLOOO!!!” What a cheek!

The thing is, most of us animals are far smarter than we let on, apart from cats – now they are truly thick. The rest of us animals, however, realise that if we let humans know how intelligent we are we might have to start doing things for a living. I mean, take for example German Shepherds, Border Collies, Spaniels and….yes….Labradors. All those breeds are examples of why it's not a good idea to let on that us dogs have a few active brain cells - look what happened - lots of them now have to work for a living. The really sussed breeds act dumb. Another animal that was stupid enough to let the humans know that they had active brains (albeit very limited activity) was the horse. Most horses now spend a lot of their life with a human on their back kicking them in the ribs.

I’m surprised that there are scientists spending money trying to suss out whether or not us animals are chrono-creatures. You’d think that they could think of better things to do with their time. Surely, they must at least suspect that us animals are much more intelligent than we let on. Have they not read Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy? Don’t they know about Dolphins? So Long and Thanks for all the Fish

I’m a bit miffed that mum thinks I’m a basic creature but I’ll keep letting her think I’m dumb. After all, it’s not me who has to worry about the Credit Munch or the falling pound (whatever that is – it’s a new one mum keeps going on about). Whatever happens I’ll get my grub and my belly tickled. I want for nothing. It’s a dog’s life. Ha Ha.