---
title: "Domestic dog · Animals and other organisms · Entities · Simulation Hypothesis"
url: https://simulation-hypothesis.com/entities/dog
description: "Up to about 600 million cortical neurons, depending on the dog. That's more than cats."
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
credit: "Ross Allan Dahl, Simulation Hypothesis (simulation-hypothesis.com)"
---

[Entities](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/entities) › Animals and other organisms › Mammals

# Domestic dog

Canis familiaris

Up to about 600 million cortical neurons, depending on the dog. That's more than cats.

Neurons

1.8 to 2.6 billion, depending on the dog measured  · whole brain 

Jardim-Messeder D et al. (2017). Dogs have the most neurons, though not the largest brain: trade-off between body mass and number of neurons in the cerebral cortex of large carnivoran species. Front Neuroanat 11:118\. doi:10.3389/fnana.2017.00118.

In the cerebral cortex (or bird pallium)

429 to 623 million, depending on the dog

Jardim-Messeder D et al. (2017). Dogs have the most neurons, though not the largest brain: trade-off between body mass and number of neurons in the cerebral cortex of large carnivoran species. Front Neuroanat 11:118\. doi:10.3389/fnana.2017.00118.

## Evidence

* fMRI scans of awake dogs show reward-related responses in the caudate to trained cues.  
Berns GS, Brooks AM, Spivak M (2012) Functional MRI in awake unrestrained dogs. PLoS ONE 7(5):e38027\. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0038027.

The [New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness](https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/nydeclaration/declaration) (2024) finds strong scientific support for conscious experience in mammals and birds.

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