Big news here in the UK has been a dog billed in one paper as 'Britain's most intelligent dog'

Red , a lurcher (greyhound crossbred,traditionally used by poachers for catching hares and rabbits) has been in Battersea Dog's Home, London, Britain's oldest sanctuary for canine waifs and strays. He had been found emaciated and abandoned in the street.

Staff at the sanctuary were mystified by an intruder who repeatedly came in at night and released Red and other dogs from their kennels. The dogs were found wandering about, usually in the kitchen area where they had found food. So a security camera was moved inside.

The'intruder' was Red. He had learned how, by reaching up and fiddling with the catch on his kennel, by teeth and paw, he could draw it back and spring it open. He was,apparently, crafty enough not to do this in broad daylight when all the staff were about to see it. He then trotted off to the kitchen and feasted. However, he was team spirited. The film clearly showed that he went first to the kennels of other dogs on his 'wing' and opened their kennels too. There were typically nine to twelve released by him, to join in his 'midnight feast',over the nights .

Staff described the scene as a great mess, with food and packets everywhere; but a lot of happy, overfed, dogs too !

This, of course, being reported, has made Red a national star and there have been hundreds of applications to rehome him.

Intelligent? Well, the two Irish Wolfhounds here, quite able to open their pen if it's not padlocked, can both open our kitchen door, and the oven door, and the refrigerators too.Not only that, but they have been known to get out and go to the next village, two miles away, where two households were startled to find them both in the kitchens there, where they had opened the back house door to get in, and were raiding the food supply and eating the food put out for the dogs. One woman was visited twice in a week . So I did my best to get an opinion from them.It was that Red was rather silly After all, once you can do it, why show the others and , worse, why let them share the spoils instead of having them all to yourself?

What do you think?

Dang, that's just freaking amazing. Animals are just more intelligent than we realize.

I had a cat that did something similar. We had 8 cats and the oldest was the incredibly smart female. We kept the cats on a wrap-around porch and did not allow them in the house most of the time. Well, my mom would yell at us kids for letting the cats into the house and we would deny we were doing so (and she of course did not believe us.

My dad was sitting in the livingroom and observed this cat wedging her paws in the screen of the window, pushing it aside and leap through the window.. and all the other cats were queued up behind her waiting to come in after her! It was totally hysterical.

On food, here's antisocial ! We had a litter of miniature poodles , one of which, a bitch, was obviously destined for obesity. Her trick , at eight weeks old, was to wait until all the bowls were just filled and her siblings starting to eat. She would then rush off to the door of the kennel , leaving her bowl, and start barking furiously there. All the others, naturally, stopped eating and rushed to the door to join in the (false)alarm. Whilst this confusion reigned she very quietly slipped away and went to the bowls, where she feasted from them all whilst the barking others were still engaged at the door, still not aware there had never been anything to bark at. The result of her little ruse was that by the time they came back there was not much left for them ! She got away with this quite a number of times, to our amusement, before they got wise. Then a burglar could have come in at mealtimes and not heard a sound

And, yes, she was obese in later life and we had to restrict her intake