Octopuses play, solve problems, navigate through mazes and have respectable short-term memories. This animal is still poorly understood, but scientists are constantly discovering new and impressive abilities. 9 in our list is the octopus, one of the smartest creatures in the sea. Kudos should go to the invertebrate with the strength and skill to screw a lid off a jar! No. After all, groundhogs still predict our weather, right? So, while some of the animals on this list have smaller brains than us, or vastly larger ones, each animal is intelligent and unique in its own way. You're might be reading this with your own intelligent little friend (your pet) by your side. We have all evolved throughout the years, continue to learn from one another and have formed friendships with each other. For example, while we can create sonar technology to track an enemy submarine, dolphins are born with it.Īll animals make their own decisions – whether it's instinctual or well thought out – just like us. We tend to believe we're the smartest species on Earth, using traditional classroom intelligence as the benchmark to measure an animal's brainpower, but those tests just scratch the surface. Anup Shah/Getty Imagesįrom detecting tuberculosis in humans to outperforming us in memory tests, we aren't the only intelligent creatures on this planet. Chimpanzees are some of the smartest animals around. Apes have as well, including Kanzi the bonobo.
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Studies published in the journal Cognition in 1984 indicated that dolphins can also grasp elements of grammar. She isn't the first animal to have a basic understanding of grammar. (Rico also took third prize in De Waal's " Animal Noble Prizes")Īnother dog, Chaser, knows more than 1,000 objects and can understand English grammar. Rico knows the name to more than 200 items - he can retrieve the object from a jumble of stuff after hearing the name only once. One the smartest dogs in the world (or at least with the most impressive vocabulary) is a border collie named Rico. This so-called "theory of mind" ability "is so important to our species," writes Slate's David Grimm, "that without it, we would have trouble learning and interacting with the world around us." In a separate study, Brian Hare, an expert in canine cognition, showed that dogs can follow and respond to human gestures, like pointing and eye movements, without training. "In many ways dogs may be more human-like than any other species, even non-human primates," researchers wrote in a 2008 dog intelligence study published in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. We understand that comparing brain to body size is one way to measure intelligence, but "scientists aren't sure if that means you need a large brain, or just the ability to pack in a lot of neurons," said Morell. We also tend to underestimate the brainpower of animals by relying too much on intelligence tests based around what humans are capable of. Right now, most people perceive speech as the main thing that separates humans from other animals, "but it's clear that parrots, dolphins, whales, and elephants have many more parts of language than we've recognized," Morell said to Business Insider.Īnd there are a lot of unknowns. Dogs may not use tools, but it doesn't make them less bright. " Chimpanzees, for example, can make tools to hunt. Brain size, vocabulary, tool use, and social learning are common metrics of animal smarts, although it's difficult to compare between species since most intelligence tests or tasks are designed for a specific animals.Īnimals evolve certain kinds of cognitive abilities to deal with pressures in their natural habitat, said Virginia Morell, author of " Animal Wise.
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Of course, it's hard to make a definitive ranking since measuring animal intelligence is problematic.