most intelligent animals

"Are You Smarter Than a Goat?" Fun Facts About the World's Most Intelligent Animals

30 October 2019

A slime mold can solve puzzles. How proud of your sudoku do you feel now?

You're not as smart as you think are. While writer Yuval Noah Harari wrote his best-selling book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankindabout the hubris and social bonds of humans, the animal kingdom is full of wondrous intelligence and social structures. "You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven," Harari quips, but chimpanzees are capable of outperforming humans at certain memory tasks, and they demonstrate empathy, altruism, and self-awareness through their problem-solving skills. Many regard them as the smartest non-human species in existence, but plenty of other animals have fascinated scientists in their studies of the brain, even challenging conventional understanding of what "intelligence" is.

For instance, whales' emotional intelligence and empathy may result in mass strandings because of their close social bonds. A crow can remember the face of a human who hurt them for years, and they can even pass on the information to another crow as a warning to stay away from that human. What was the nicest thing you've done for your friends lately?

That's right; research has found that crows are capable of remembering the faces of humans who mistreat them, even years later (claims range from 2.5 to 5 years). "The regions of the crow brain that work together are not unlike those that work together in mammals, including humans," lead researcher John Marzluff, of the University of Washington, said. Additionally, crows are very social creatures, have been observed following funeral-like rites when a family member dies, and they pass on their grudges to others as a survival tip.
Basically, if humans acted more like crows, we'd never tip badly or get back together with an ex, which means our species would be happier as well as more intelligent. Want to learn how to attract crows and observe them in your own backyard? Try this helpful guide from WorldBirds.org.
▲

With more than 300 billion neurons, elephant brains are one of the most interesting systems known to scientists. Widely thought to be one of the most intelligent creatures on earth, elephants exhibit a wide range of emotions, advanced learning capabilities, self-awareness, and even a sense of humor.
▲

Sperm whales can reach up to 67-feet long, which makes tracking their behaviors to evaluate their intelligence difficult for researchers. But their brain size is the largest of any animal on earth, and all sperm whales are thought to have descended from the same female (nicknamed "Eve"). But brain size doesn't strongly correlate to intelligence; its sperm whales' behaviors that illuminate what thoughtful creatures they are.
"Dolphin and whale societies are at least as complex as what we have observed in primates," said evolutionary biologist Susanne Shultz. "They are extremely playful, they learn from each other, have complex communication. One problem for understanding just how smart they are is how difficult it is to observe them and to understand their marine world. Therefore, we have only a glimpse of what they are capable of."
For instance, sperm whale vocalizations are observed to be distinct in different regions, leading to comparisons to different dialects of human language. Some have even proposed that whales call each other by specific names.
▲

Rats are cool. Rats are fun. Rats are quirky. They're also highly intelligent. Why else do you think we imprison them in tiny cages and poke them in labs to test our drugs and cosmetics? Rats' brain structures and functions are "remarkably similar" to ours, studies find. Their problem-solving skills and ability to detect patterns and rules sometimes outperform humans.
▲

Like whales, dolphins are in the cetacean family, and their intelligence is so admired by some scientists that researchers like Thomas I. White of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and Loyola Marymount University believe that dolphins should be called "non-human persons." "Like humans, dolphins appear to be self-conscious, unique individuals with distinctive personalities, memories, and a sense of self, who are vulnerable to a wide range of physical and emotional pain and harm, and who have the power to reflect upon and choose their actions," White says.
Among their interesting behaviors, dolphins will think to check their reflections in a lab's mirror if they sense something is different about their bodies. At the New York Aquarium, two researchers noted: "We marked them on different parts of their bodies with a magic marker. Each dolphin... postured in front of the mirror and positioned itself in strange ways to expose the marked part of its body much the same way that you and I would if we passed a wall with wet paint on it. As soon as we get to the bathroom, we would look in the mirror and turn around to see if we got any paint on us."
▲

They use tools, they recognize themselves in a mirror, and they can grasp human language signifiers to express what they want. More important than their impressive intelligence, however, is that they're freaking adorable.
▲

Goats are highly resourceful, and their intelligence is credited with their resilience to survive in harsh conditions. "They can manipulate objects easily, they can learn complex tasks, and they can remember them," says Elodie Briefer, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Zurich. They're curious by nature, can open locks on their own and escape their pens.
▲

Despite having brains the size of sesame seeds, bees have neuroplasticity, like humans, which means they can learn new skills and use various places in the brain to perform functions like memory. They're also highly social and have organized roles within their communities: "The youngest bees are nurse bees, tending to the brood (the pupa or larva stage). Later they make the honey combs, forming perfect hexagonal shapes. Lastly, they become foragers, finding honey and bringing it back to the hive."
▲

Octopuses are in a league of their own. Most invertebrates don't have the level of intelligence that scientists say these weirdly shaped sea creatures do. In one study, researchers tested whether the creatures would be able to distinguish between two different people. They had two individuals interact with an octopus, with one acting extremely friendly and another being cold and standoffish. After a short while, when the two people would enter their living area, the octopus would ignore the impersonal one in favor of the more friendly guest.
So, scientific odds are that octopuses are better at dating than we are.
▲

Pigs are comparable to chimps in intelligence. Among other skills, they demonstrate the ability to use tools without being prompted by humans. Visayan warty pigs are an endangered species native to the Philippines; they've recently been observed building nests when preparing to have piglets, which meets criteria as tool usage. In general, pigs are said to match the intelligence of a 3-year-old human, and while that's conjecture, they do demonstrate strong social bonds and an uncanny sense of empathy, as exhibited by various stories of pigs saving humans' lives.
▲

Named 2019's "hottest bachelor" by The Cut is this amazing brainless, slime mold. Nicknamed "the Blob," "Physarum polycephalum is a yellowish slime mold of abundant talent and charm who practices self-care (they can heal cuts on their body in less than two-and-a-half minutes). They have no mouth, stomach, or eyes, yet can detect food and digest it, and can move around, although they have no legs, making them the ideal dinner date. They don't have a brain, but they are always trying to learn new things, and what they lack in brain they make up for in sexes: Rather than having one or two of them, Blob has 720. Above all, they want to be loved for what's inside, which isn't hard because that's where nearly all of them is."
The reason this is cheating is because this dear Blob is not technically an animal, nor plant, nor fungi. Audrey Dussutour, a researcher of slime molds at the Center for Integrative Biology in Toulouse, told CNBC Make that the Blob is an "amoebozoa," which is the kingdom used to classify organisms that meet no known criteria of plant or animal.
▲

Related Posts