Philadelphia, PA—Following a multi-year, multi-million-dollar study which proved there is a direct link between amount of daily sleep and cognitive performance, researchers have made the logical conclusion that cats are the smartest animal in existence.
Cats have long been considered among the most skilled predators, having the highest hunt-to-kill ratio of any mammal, but the new finding shows that may not be solely a result of pristine physical performance.
“We’re extremely pleased with the quality of the study,” said Dr. Marvin Cullen, the researcher who began the study. “The findings were incontrovertible, and I think our extrapolation onto feline cognition is prudent.”
Many did not expect the conclusion.
“Cats? Smart?” asked Charlene Bayer, owner of nine cats. “No. I don’t think so. Half these jokers can’t even bury their poop properly. Ain’t no way they’re any smarter than a person, or even a lizard.”
Some were not taken by surprise at all.
“It just makes sense,” says Blake Dodson, a random passerby who approached one of our reporters and demanded to talk about the topic. “I mean, if you just do the math, cats sleep, like, 14 hours a day, humans about 8, so that puts them, you know, 75 percent smarter than humans. I mean, which one of us has figured out how to get the other to take care of ’em, you know what I mean?”
Dr. Cullen defended his findings against criticism, stressing the importance of looking at the evidence in aggregate.
“Sure, we’ll see cases where one specific human is smarter than one specific cat,” he explained, “but on the whole, it becomes quite clear that the additional four to eight hours of sleep each day tracks exactly to intelligence. Many point to dumb things cats do, but I’d like to point out that no cat has ever dropped $75 on a selfie stick.”
