Japanese scientists have discovered that cats and dogs are equally intelligent but the former chooses not to show it.

A total of 49 domestic feline friends were subjected to an experiment to test their memory. The animals were allowed to eat food from two of the four bowls presented to them. After 15 minutes of being absent from the area, all the bowls were emptied. The scientists observed if the cats could recall which bowls they had eaten food from.

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The researchers found out that cats have the ability to "retrieve and utilize" information that answers "where" and "what" questions by encoding a previous event. It was also observed that cats are similar to dogs which can understand human facial expressions and gestures. This means that feline companions are not clueless when they stare blankly at humans.

The study noted that cats may be as smart as man's best friend. This is contrary to popular belief that the latter has higher intelligence. It is also possible that they know their names but choose to ignore when humans call them.

Psychologist Saho Takagi from Kyoto University said that "understanding cats more deeply helps to establish better cat-human relationships." She added that "an interesting speculation is that they [cats] may enjoy actively recalling memories of their experience like humans."

Meanwhile, Professor Laurie Santos of Yale University noted that the Japanese experiment serves as an opening to more studies that will assess the capacity of cats to remember things and events.

Dogs are known for their episodic memory which is associated with self-awareness. Other animals known to have this kind of intelligence include pigeons, primates, and rats.

This research work was published in the journal Behavioral Process.