Feline lovers, get ready for a cat fight! It seems that cats have smaller brains than dogs because they're less social, according to research reported in The Telegraph.

Scientists at Oxford University who were looking at how the brain has evolved in various mammals over the course of 60 million years found that the size of an animal’s brain is linked to how sociable he is. Over time, the research found, monkey brains enlarged the most - followed by horses, then dolphins, then camels and finally, dogs. The report, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, explains that very social animals require more brain power than solitary animals. Animals with relatively big brains typically live in social groups. Cats tend to be loners and have slower-growing brains.

"Groups of highly social species have undergone much more rapid increases [in brain size across history] than more solitary species," the study's lead author, Dr Susanne Shultz, noted in a news release. "This suggests that the cooperation and coordination needed for group living can be challenging and over time some mammals have evolved larger brains to be able to cope with the demands of socializing."Dogs have long been thought of as more social, while cats tend to not need company. "But it appears that interaction is good for the brain and extends to other species, like ourselves," Shultz told the Telegraph.

And, added study co-author Robin Dunbar, "For the first time, it has been possible to provide a genuine evolutionary time depth to the study of brain evolution. It is interesting to see that even animals that have contact with humans, like cats, have much smaller brains than dogs and horses because of their lack of sociality."