Day 93: IQ

I had lunch in a small restaurant with my dad and my daugther (see My dad's blog).  In keeping with my meatless summer I ordered the fried octopus with salad which came highly recommended. During the course of the meal conversation roamed from the high intelligence of octopi (?) through blogging,  to the ideal education system (which seems to be the absence of system). I mention this not because we were debating educating octopuses (I checked) but because Sasha mentioned that she had some friends who have stopped eating them because they are deemed to be highly intelligent.  I find it interesting that IQ is used as a food classification system.  Clearly fruits and vegetables can be eaten as nobody has ever debated the relative intelligence of carrots or bananas.  The difficulty comes with higher life forms.  We are probably safe eating snails and oysters but what should we do with tuna, salmon, sheep, cows or rabbits?  Even more complicated: pigs (supposedly highly intelligent), dogs (eaten in Asia), cats (eaten when very hungry), horses (eaten in France).  Finally we come to dolphins which are universally admired and praised for their intelligence but are eaten in Japan.   I'm not sure that IQ is the right indicator for making diet decisions.