The Real Intelligence of Animals, page 1

Hello everyone,

I was browsing the forums and after a while I noticed a startling belief amongst some of our members that animals are simply dumb and purely instinctive. Many people here think they have very little intelligence!

I'm going to attempt to put that to rest in this video compilation, because when it comes to talking about intelligence, it is easier to recognize it then hear about it..

But First, here is a video talking about human superiority.

MUST WATCH!!!



I think to begin, I am going to start with Alex the Grey Parrot. The reason is because Alex has shown understanding of identification of object, but he does not merely identify them as a preprogrammed response. He can actually differentiate between objects and can answer questions in regards to quantity, quantity of a certain color. He can identify objects within a collection also. This is not the most amazing thing though. Alex can communicate with us in our own medium. He can tell us what he wants and at one point as you can see notices his food is cold and makes a comment to that effect. Very amazing stuff here.







R.I.P. Alex..

Another sign of intelligence, thought to be absent in most nonhuman animals, is the ability to engage in complex, meaningful communication; only recently has the general perception of parrots as mindless mimics been shown to be incorrect.2 Prior to the 1970's, researchers lacked knowledge of psittacine communication in the wild, and assumed that natural behaviors would not differ greatly from what had been observed in captivity: the ability of parrots to reproduce, with great accuracy, sounds such as those of human speech,5 but little (if any) ability to use these vocalizations in a meaningful way.6 The few studies in the 1950's and 1960's to challenge these perceptions -- e.g., Mowrer's attempts to teach mimetic birds to engage in meaningful communication with humans -- used standard psychological laboratory training paradigms and were not successful.7,8 Since the 1970's however, researchers working both in the field and in aviary settings have provided data to indicate that natural psittacine vocalizations might indeed be meaningful: Vocalizations appear to mediate social interactions between mated pairs and among flock members, and not only the physical structure but also the appropriate use of these vocalizations seems to be learned.3,4,9 Such findings on sophisticated vocal behaviors, when taken in conjunction with the data on complex problem-solving abilities, suggested that the psychologists' failures to achieve meaningful communication with their birds might be due to inappropriate training techniques, rather than to any inherent lack of intelligence in the psittacine subjects.1

Source

Alex is not where it ends! Grey parrots are not the only birds that show intelligence.





Yes I know they where trained to do it, but they understand the concept which is important. What about what ravens can do in the wild where they are not trained?



Next I would like to talk about Koko the gorilla. Koko learned American sign language, which was later turned into his own dialect gorilla sign language. The first video, is in regards to emotion and how an animal is capable of feeling.



Koko Describing the death of his mother.




Can an animal show artistic ability? Can they create works of art like we can? How about an elephant?



Who's memory is better? Us or chimps? Lets find out.



Chimp is distracted, but remembers anyway.









Time for some Comic releif!!



The octopus is the smartest of all invertebrates, they really do display uncanny intelligence. At least a billion times more than you would expect.





PURE PROBLEM SOLVING BY AN INVERTEBRATE! WATCH!!

.

This one is really cool..



HOW ABOUT THE SQUIRREL?



This is a great mako shark documentary. It's kind of long so be patient, it is really worth a watch all the way through. It will eventually get into real mako intelligence.

Mako Shark - Long Vid : Some Parts May Be Disturbing for Animal Lovers.

I will post more in the future but I hope you enjoy this compilation!!


[edit on 5-6-2009 by DaMod]

[edit on 5-6-2009 by DaMod]

[edit on 5-6-2009 by DaMod]

reply to post by DaMod

---

Yeah I see that...

I know already of all these cases, I'll hang by to see if you find something I don't know about

I'm sure you can find more about elephants and also dolphins. I remember a doc which talked, among other things, about a situation where wild dolphins interacted with human fisherman in order to catch fish, a relation that was beneficial for both sides (except the fish).

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984

---

Uh yes they are concious....?

Many animals have very human emotions.

Also the main point is most humans are probably tasty.


p.s: it's also not all about intelligence from "OUR" view, they can be intelligent in their own ways, there are many things that animals can do WAY better than us, which people seem to ignore.

Also the understanding and connection a human can have between his pet can be unreal, a cat can truly feel and understand you as you can understand them, love them and they will love you.

I see a lot of humans try to belittle animals, try to say animals are nothing but meat, and are unworthy of any praise, and that humans are WAY above animals.

That truly is selfish thinking, and they do it to "convince" themselves that it's ok to eat animals.

Well I think it's ok to eat animals, but I think it goes too far when you have disrespect for the animals we share this planet with, the animals that without them we would NOT exist, without them the planet would become a VERY dull place.




[edit on 6-6-2009 by _Phoenix_]

reply to post by DaMod

---

Great thread OP!!

Starred and Flagged.

People who dismissed animals ("oh they are just animals!" they do not have feelings)-

That people need to look closer and beyond.

[edit on 6/6/09 by plutoxgirl]

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