New research from the University of Queensland finds that cats are better than dogs

Their findings reveal that humans aren't as social creatures in the sense that they are more efficient at keeping track of their tails as dogs.

To be sure, the difference might not be that cats and dogs in general exhibit different tendencies to "keep track"; rather that traits such as size and aggression can't be predicted by how different cats and dogs behave in relation to the way their tails are maintained.

But it is important to acknowledge that this particular study was used only for human or cat identification purposes; hence this analysis is not a definitive guide for people on keeping tabs on their cats and dogs.

In some cases – such as in the case of the "piggyback" study, in which researchers in France tracked the movements of five female dogs in between visits in which their tails would go in the grass and on their backs – the tails might reflect genetic differences between cats and dogs.

For others, including the German Shepherd dog, who could not be tracked, the tails didn't provide information about the behavior of cats and dogs. The German Shepherd was followed for two weeks, and all six dogs were placed in an enclosure in a residential area.

While all six dogs received the same kind of sensory aids, the four who weren't placed "right for them" tended to "do, say, one or two less tasks" and exhibited greater attention and sensitivity to different types of stimuli than the one without tails, the researchers report online today in Nature.

That is, it is not uncommon for a dog or cat not to display similar behaviour over many months, but it is also possible that this behavior can vary slightly from year to year depending on what time frame has passed, though this might not be the case for all species. "It is possible that differences within particular species might have similar consequences," says study co-author Dr Matthew Levesque, from the Université de Montréal in Canada.

Levesque and his colleagues also studied tails of German guinea pigs, an important study that compared how different guinea pigs displayed their tails during their life cycles.

Although the study showed that cat tails did not carry more information about behaviour than do cats or dogs, "it shows the very opposite effect that our studies reported," he says. Furthermore, some of the animals could display behavioural variation without taking into account the fact that their tails were held there for more than six months.

The scientists also wanted to be clear that the characteristics of dogs were relatively similar. Most dogs did have a pattern of tail movements, some of which were even observed from an early age but not so in the womb. However, a few dogs had been given no tail-tracking and showed some variation that was not present in many breeds, he says.

In a similar study, this didn't reveal any particular behaviour variations for some dogs – but it did indicate that the dogs had the best survival chances by performing an emergency procedure and "using a lot of force over the course of the day".

Nevertheless, the dogs in the study had had far more long-term success with social behaviour tests for humans because they were far more social and had seen their tails at least once a week, and at least twice in their lifetimes, said Levesque.

He cautions that the new findings may be preliminary and that "the initial result might not be enough to suggest that the tail of a well-known dog, for instance, is more aggressive than what we found a few years ago".

"I don't like to play politics with things but I need to be clear on now," he says.