Our pets can seem far more intelligent than we give them credit for. And the things that they sometimes get up to, well, they make it seem like they’re secretly 300 IQ geniuses or even mad scientists.
People have been sharing the “most creepily intelligent things” that their pets have done in a viral thread on the r/AskReddit subreddit, and the stories make us wonder… what exactly do our pets get up to when we leave our homes? Maybe it’s time to install a webcam to see just how smart they are? Check out the best posts below, upvote your fave ones, and be sure to drop us a comment about the times your own pets acted incredibly intelligently, dear Pandas! When you’re done, check out our earlier posts about smart pets here and here.
Bored Panda reached out to Dr. Suzanne MacDonald from the Department of Psychology at York University in Toronto so that we could get to understand the topic of animal intelligence better. Read on for her surprising and interesting insights.
#21
There was a time when, coming back from a trip, the balls of my feet were swollen and it hurt going up and down the stairs. My cat, that little s**t, would actually imitate me by limping up and down the stairs (taking the steps one at a time) while meowing pitifully. I swear if he could talk, he would've said something like "see, this is how stupid you look."
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195points
#22
My 13 lb ginger cat always had to be near me. Some of the doors in my house didn’t latch, and he learned to open them by using his body as a battering ram. Okay, fine. So one day I’m in a closed room with a door that does latch, and I hear the doorknob rattle. It rattles for a bit then turns, and the cat pops the door open with his weight and saunters in.
I miss him.
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195points
#23
He has to take antibiotics for ten days They are pills.
In the beginning, i was wondering why he wasnt getting better. Turns out, the a-hole was keeping them in his cheek or under his tongue and spitting them out under the closet.
So now i hold him until he swallows and then i check his mouth.
It’s really one of those times i wish i could explain to him why i am ‘torturing’ him with eye drops and painkillers and whatnot. YOU ARE A SENIOR KITIZEN AND YOU HAVE A SEVERE COLD. Stop spitting things out!
On the other hand, he has never scratched or bitten me, just struggles and pulls away.he is a very sweet cat.
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186points
#24
Growing up we had a half dingo dog who would unclip other dogs and then hold the lead in her mouth and take the other dog for a walk like a human. The neighbours were astounded when she took a liking to their Jack Russell and starting unclipping him and taking him over to ours.
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171points
#25
My daughter is developmentally delayed. I was in the shower, husband was getting dressed. We had company staying, still asleep, so door locking routines were off. Little lady opened the front door and started running.
Not sure how long it was before one of us walked by and saw the door open. Hubs started yelling, I threw on clothes, banged on guest's door, and started running. We didn't see her anywhere. Hubs jumped in car. Guest ran other direction in pjs. I collapsed on sidewalk, then called 911.
Officers arrived and quickly located our 15 pound cockapoo standing alert on the sidewalk 2 blocks away. In the bushes nearby was my wandering child, happy as a clam, digging around in a neighbors yard. We hadn't even realized the dog was gone. He happily walked back while my daughter, 5 years old, tried to outrun police officers. They cornered her in a school parking lot and had me come grab her.
We now have multiple locks and an alarm.
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163points
#26
I watched my Australian Shepherd problem solve how to get her tennis balls that get stuck under the furniture out by taking another tennis ball and rolling it to knock the stuck one out. She seemed very pleased with herself.
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156points
#27
I went to the toilet and found my cat in there having a s***. I’m surprised he wasn’t reading the f***ing newspaper.
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141points
#28
Not my dog (I have one but he hasn't had any remarkable moment for now), but my neighbor's dog.
He is old and frail and neglects him, even though he gave him a place to stay (he used to be a stray).
He knows he won't get much food from his owner, if any, so he usually spends his days roaming the neighborhood and going to house to house. He knows specifically which neighbor will give him food and knows the precise time we all finished lunch. He used to frequent my grandma's house, waiting patiently at the front door for leftovers (if she didn't have any, he would leave with dignity, although he pooped in my grandma's garden as a revenge once).
The most intelligent part tho is his ability to sneak outside his fenced yard, and nobody knows how. Even with the gates closed, he would suddenly appear outside or inside. Once, I watched him closely as he was walking home, to make sure I could see him. However, suddenly he stopped and looked at me, never breaking eye contact. I had to sneeze, and by the time I could look back at him (three [frikkin] seconds), he was back in his yard. The [boy] was clever to take the opportunity.
He also is aware of the concept of traffic lights and pedestrian crosses over roads, as I've witnessed him multiple times waiting patiently for his light to turn green so he could pass the street, and knows to look for cars anytime he has to cross on an unmarked area.
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140points
#30
My dog once started barking at the door, like someone was about to knock or come in, while I was eating. I got up to see who was there and it was no one. I went back and some of my food was on the ground, being shared by the dog and two cats. I think one of the cats knocked some off, so they worked together as a team to steal my food.
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123points
#31
So I have this cat: Chairman Meow. He had to go live at my parents because I was in the Navy and my ship was deploying, and they started letting him go out and come in as he pleased (which I was totally in favor of; he was getting chubby as an apartment cat).
Then my mom started to notice something weird. Now, for context, she's in her 60s and had just retired. My dad was still working for another year or two. With me and my brother grown and moved out, there was a lot of time home alone for her (not that she didn't go out or have hobbies, but that's beside the point). What she noticed is that sometimes, she'd let the cat out, then 10 minutes later he'd walk by inside. She started worrying that she was having blackouts, or suffering from something with "Early Onset" in the name or something. It was happening often enough that she started keeping paper logs.
Then one day she went down to the (finished) basement for the first time in a while, and stepped into a horror film. Like I said, my brother and I had moved out, and the basement was carpeted etc. but was mostly being used to store stuff. Including, apparently, blood. Lots of blood. Staining the carpet, dripping down a wall, in the ceiling... She even found a pile of entrails.
Turns out what was happening was: the cat had gotten up in the suspended ceiling, and found a loose brick in the foundation. He'd worked it loose. Being a cat, he still demanded humans serve him by opening the door, but he could go in and out as he pleased also. And he was bringing his trophies back into the basement. The entrails I mentioned? On closer inspection, it was a rabbit (well, half a rabbit).
And that's how my cat made my mom think she was losing her mind.
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119points
#32
I woke up one summer morning to a flooded basement. My dad was yelling at me that I had left the outdoor faucet running which caused the flood. Spent hours and lots of money cleaning it up. Come to find out my dog, after watching me use the faucet, figured out how to turn it on. We only found this out because one day my dad heard someone cranking on the faucet, and when he looked into the yard, my boxer's mouth was around the valve, twisting her head like a confused puppy until it turned on. She never did figure out how to turn it off though.
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113points
#33
My brothers cat will look at you through a mirror and watch you. (Yes, he is looking I tested him by pretending to throw a cushion at him, he ducked) He can also recognise himself in the mirror. He also enjoys watching you shower through the mirror.
The cat is obsessed and freaky with mirrors.
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109points
#34
If I called my girlfriend at around 9 PM on a Friday, my dog would always get excited and head to the truck.
I was stationed in Shanghai for about a year, but lived for years in Thailand with my GF and my dog.
Whenever I had a long weekend I'd fly back to Thailand. My dog quickly picked up on the idea that whenever my GF switched from speaking Thai to English, she was talking to me. I would call her when I arrived at the airport on a Friday evening, as it was only about 15 minutes from our home, and she'd come pick me up.
My dog was able to put this whole scenario together and went ape-crazy whenever I called on a Friday evening and he would immediately head for the truck to go pick me up. When I would call her at other hours of the day, he would look at her like he knew who she was talking to, but he knew that it didn't mean that I was coming home.
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106points
#35
When my kitty Furiosa catches the occasional mouse in our house, we flush the carcass down the toilet. She'll watch the water burial with great interest as the dead mouse swirls down and away...
A week or so ago I woke up and went to use the bathroom only to find a maimed and dead mouse floating in the bowl. I checked with my husband, but he did not put it in there and it's only us and the pets in the house. So Furi must have disposed of her own mouse body this time.
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104points
#36
I had friends round and one of them brought fudge. cats were interested but got chased off it a couple of time. They wait for attention to shift to something else. Little cat goes into the middle of the group of friends, acts all cute causes a distraction, while bigger cat gets on the table, knocks down the fudge, little cat quietly moves on and then joins her brother eating fudge. Proper teamwork, that not only used their individual strengths but exploited our weaknesses. Impressed.
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98points
#37
She was chilling on the couch but the sun was hitting her eyes and she didn't like it. So she pulled one of the cushions that were piled next to her over enough that it blocked the sun and resumed her nap.
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95points
#38
Woke me up and brought me outside to under the deck, where he very obviously showed me the cat that got out and was hiding under there. He looked at the cat, then back at me, then at the cat, then back at me.
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94points
#40
My outside dog climbs into my hammock all the time, which is up against the side of the house on the front porch.
Kept hearing this faint "tap... tap.... tap...." and realized he was swinging it, and it was bumping the wall!
Took a LONG time to figure out, too.. because when he'd hear the front door open, he'd immediately jump down and run to the door.. so we never actually saw him in it, until one day I looked out the window to see him jumping down. (it's in an awkward-to-see spot, can't see the hammock itself, I just happened to see him jump out of it this one time, and heard the tap as he did... put 2 and 2 together...)
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71points


