Smartest animals?

I recall seeing on a Discovery program... mice are able to pass their intelligence/memory to their offspring, that the next generation can travel through mazes better, then the next generation does better, and so on.

But what is a measure of intelligence? Squids are smarter than cats, yet I feel they are more intelligent than that (especially since their blood make-up is unlike anything else on earth)... hell, squids are aliens. Oops! Anyway, back to my question...

How intelligent does an animal have to be to war with itself and destroy its environment? That doesn't sound smart at all, yet people are doing that every day.

Would a collective mind, such as bees and ants, be considered intelligent? Anyone who has seen shows about the South American fire ants... the way each ant moves and acts for the greater "good", like fingers or tendrals...

Where would the distinction be between intelligence and natural behavior?

Has anyone seen the show "Most Extreme" on Animal Planet? They pick a catagory, and list the top ten... most of the time, humans aren't even on the list (ie strength, speed, reproduction, etcetera). There was one show that had the topic of intelligence. The topmost intelligent animal was this species of parrot from South America (can't recall name)... it can distinquish between 30 different languages, put together puzzles, and other "basic" things.

*if I recall correctly, I think the squid was third, and chimp was second... god, squids are aliens. If anyone doubts this, research them... there is something about them*

These are the measurements of EQ for various animals
(EQ is explained in the link I provided earlier)

Species EQ
Man 7.44
Dolphin 5.31
Chimpanzee 2.49
Rhesus Monkey 2.09
Elephant 1.87
Whale 1.76
Dog 1.17
Cat 1.00
Horse 0.86
Sheep 0.81
Mouse 0.50
Rat 0.40
Rabbit 0.40


It is interesting to see (also on the same page as the above info) that mice have the same brain to body weight ratio as humans.

Originally posted by m0rbid
Try with a dog, stare at him in the eyes, and he'll get bored in a mather of seconds...

Not all dogs! I have a husky/queensland mix that loves nothing more than to stare you in the face. I have had staring matches with her that have ended in a draw, and some that she has won. I also have a Lab/Pit/Shepherd mix that has separation-anxiety and is afraid of the dark. Go figure!

As for determining which is the most intelligent species, I often wonder if we are able to judge that. I mean, our basis for measuring intelligence is based on our understanding of what defines intelligence. What if animals are really more intelligent than us according to their own intelligence scale? What if they think that we are stupid because we don't meet their expectations for intelligence? I think that dolphins are probably the most intelligent species, maybe more than humans even.

Nineteen centuries ago, Plutarch, a Greek moralist and biographer made this statement: "to the dolphin alone, beyond all other, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage". In our own times Barbara Tufty made the comment "he [Dolphins] also exhibits a friendly willingness to cooperate with other earth creatures -- a rare attribute which another animal, Homo Sapiens, has not yet learned to do with any consistency".

In 1962 Dr. Dreher and Dr. Evans were aboard the research vessel Sea Quest, 300 miles south of San Diego, studying gray whales. They had strung a number of vertical aluminum poles and microphones inside Scammon's Lagoon, erecting a type of barrier. A short time later five Pacific Bottle-nosed dolphins were spotted about 500 yards from the barrier. After a few minutes of what was labeled conversation, a scout was sent from the group. Microphones picked up his sonar soundings as he closely surveyed the poles. When he returned to the pod an explosion of whistles, chirps and Bronx cheer-like noises were recorded via microphones. After several minutes of conversation the dolphins proceeded through the barrier and into the bay.

Dr. John C. Lilly, who has provided extensive research on dolphins, performed the following two experiments which I consider well worthy of notice.

Using a mind probe set in the brain, which when stimulated with an electrical current gave the dolphin a rewarding sensation, Dr. Lilly set up a switch where Dolphin #6 could reward himself by pushing a lever. "While I was assembling it, I noticed that the dolphin was closely watching what I was doing. Almost before I could finish assembling and placing the rods necessary to push the switch (which was out of the water above the animal), the dolphin started pushing on the rod. By the time the switch was connected to the rest of the apparatus he had learned the proper way to push it."
There was no random or apparent accidental contacts before the dolphin learned how. The same thing happened with three different dolphins. They seemed to anticipate the purpose of the switch. Probably from seeing him push it and connecting the push to the reward. Dr. Lilly had used this same technique on monkeys and made the statement that it usually took a chimp about 100 random tries before he learned to push the button, and then a few more to learn how to push the button.

Dr. Lilly was attempting to make Dolphin #8 whistle a burst of a given pitch, duration and intensity in order to obtain a reward. The dolphin quickly caught on. Every time he whistled his blowhole would move and a whistle would be emitted. Then Dr. Lilly noticed that the dolphin had added a new rule to the game. He was raising the pitch of each subsequent whistle. Suddenly, the blowhole twitched, but no sound. He had passed our hearing range. No sound-- no reward. Dolphin #8 emitted two more supersonic twitches and the third was hearable. From that time on he did not go out of Dr. Lilly's acoustic range. The Dolphin had determined what his hearing range was and stayed within it.

Another dolphin was taped, after Dr. Lilly said "the TRR is now ten per second" (train repetition rate) repeating "TRR" in a high pitched, Donald Duck, quacking-like voice. The same dolphin also picked out "three hundred and twenty three" and also mimicked every laugh laughed in the lab at that time.

Dolphins have no prehensile extremities; hence their intelligence has never gone in the direction of manipulating their environment -- their thoughts have been left to develop inward. Hence their culture would be totally different from ours.
www.polaris.net...

our frontal lobes in our brain are larger than any other animal on earth except for one or 2 types of dolphins.

frontal lobes do all the 'higher order' thinking, which we consider to be intelligent type actions. Species with more 'old brain' to 'new brain' (frontal lobe) ratios will be much better at instinctual, sensory perception, and physical activity than a human however. for instance, if you took a cave man and were able to teach him rules to a game such as football, chances are he would completely dominate - as our ancestors were thought to have much more old brain (controls body motion, on the fly instinctual thinking) mass than we currently do.

Humans are the most intelligent known creature on the planet. End of story

One could agrue that humans are not the smartest/most intelligent animal in this world with the fact of our proven self-destruction.

I've always liked in the first Matrix movie in which Mr Jones is explaining the catagorization of mankind as a virus... what other creature breeds uncontrolably, destroys its habitat, moves onto another, breeds more?

We destroy our homes, kill our environment, wage war on our neighbors, eliminate uncounted other animal species... and we are the intelligent ones?

There is nothing mankind can do that nature cannot do... usually better. (Well, there is one thing, but I'll save that for last).

Dolphins, bats, elephants, alligators, and even trees communicate on a grander scale than us. You may use the internet and satelite communication as being better... but we are relying on something other than ourselves. How the hell did our parents and grandparents handle things?

Birds, termites, and beavers build structures that are structurally stronger than anything we can build... and when taken to scale, much larger than what we are capable of doing.

I suppose that people could say "Ahh, but we have the sciences!" Where has that brought us? Into stagnation, a slow downward spiral of self decay and mental laziness.

Medicine has brought us far... we can now take pills that give us worse side affects than what the original symptoms were. We can extend our life by ten years with the help of machines.

The only redeeming thing about mankind that I can see which nature has not done is ART, more specifically, the ability to express and draw emotion from a viewer. There are many things in nature that are beautiful... but one has to wonder if its creator, or animals in passing, can reflect on it? It is this one thing that seperates us from animal... our ability to reflect on beauty, to create images geared to bringing a feeling.

But does that make us the most intelligent? No. We have one skill nature does not. How many skills does nature have that we don't?

i think it all depends on how each person perceives "intelligence"... a lot of us have been brought up to believe it is brain size, or IQ, or EQ, or how certain animals can be most like humans.. but, what about how smart they are in their own right?

i seem to have this fascination with pigeons.. they seem very smart to me and i know most people don't like them just because they have large droppings, but what do we expect them to do- use a toilet? i think the pigeon can adapt to anything and live in whatever enviroment we create/destroy..

also, cats...yes, because they have made us their masters... i always say that i would like to come back as a cat.. providing i have a good owner, of course...but, gosh, they are pretty sneaky aren't they?

ants and termites, as well.. as much as they annoy us, i respect them for their sticking together as a community and working together. i think it's amazing how they work together.. if only we could be more like them....

i'm sure i could find an example with every animal or insect or virus i researched or was pointed out to me.. also, i think we are very smart as well..i think we have a large capacity to be extremely smart, but our greed and ego's get in the way... if they didn't, i believe we could have the power to help the whole animal kingdom/insect world, etc and have everything live in harmony...i guess i just figured out that we are the smartest if we let go of some issues as people...because there is definitely a reason why humans are such a different animal than all others...i'm definitely dissapointed in our race, but i have hope for it.

Jezebel

Yah, I know we can't generalize on this, but most dogs seem to have a shorter attention span when it comes to stuff like that. But on the other hand, show a toy or a cookie and he won't leave you alone untill he got it.

Soothsayer

Hehehee. I always loved this part of the movie my self.
I don't think we're that intelligent my self, and I loved you example (I think it was you?) of when you talked about ants and bees. This kind of 'collective consciousness' seem, to me, to be the highest form of intelligence ever. Imagine if humans could reach that, and everybody would act for the best of ALL HUMANS, instead of just their selves.

Ok, let's get this straight so it's clear for everyone =] The top 10 smartest animals on the planet, in order are:
1)great apes, like chimps, gorrillas, orangs etc.
2)dolphins
3)monkeys (different from great apes!!)
4)elephants
5) pigs
6)parots
7)dogs
8) crows and magpies
9) octupus and squid
10) squirrels

Now there's a lot of different opinions/ theories on the "top 10" but this is the most common =]

.02

chimps can problem solve at a pretty high level, and so can an octopus, I'd put them #2 and #3

reply to post by soothsayer


I'd say your arguing judgement, morals and values more than intelligence

if you look at it from problem solving perspective and things like that, homo sapiens are miles ahead of any other animal

Let’s not forget about our friends in the Parrot family. Sad to say an African Grey named Alex, who could speak 150 different words, could identify about 14 different colors, as well as many objects, recently died. A dog lives about 15 years, African Grays, Cockatoos, Macaws, Amazons can live up to 80 years: That’s a lot of time to learn. Our little friend the Parakeet, which can be bought at any Petsmart for about $20, has also had been known to be quite the chatterbox as well demonstrating high intelligence. I have three Parakeets and a Red Bellied Conure and they are very smart. There are actually many birds in the Parakeet family and the proper name for the common little bird we find at the pet store is Budgie. Some bird owners claim there little feathered friends can speak in context and some research has suggested that some of the smartest parrots have the cognitive ability of a four or five year old. I also have a border collie and am happy to have some of the smartest animals in the world in my family. My collie is really sharp and she is only five, imagine how smart she would be if she could make it to 80.

Alex’s language facility was, in some ways, more surprising than the feats of primates that have been taught American Sign Language, like Koko the gorilla, trained by Penny Patterson at the Gorilla Foundation/Koko.org in Woodside, Calif., or Washoe the chimpanzee, studied by R. Allen and Beatrice Gardner at the University of Nevada in the 1960s and 1970s.

But by using novel methods of teaching, Dr. Pepperberg prompted Alex to learn about 150 words, which he could put into categories, and to count small numbers, as well as colors and shapes. “The work revolutionized the way we think of bird brains,” said Diana Reiss, a psychologist at Hunter College who works with dolphins and elephants.

Alex showed surprising facility. For example, when shown a blue paper triangle, he could tell an experimenter what color the paper was, what shape it was, and — after touching it — what it was made of. He demonstrated off some of his skills on nature shows, including programs on the BBC and PBS.

Like parrots can, he also picked up one-liners from hanging around the lab, like “calm down,” and “good morning.” He could express frustration, or apparent boredom, and his cognitive and language skills appeared to be about as competent as those in trained primates.

The New York Times

You know, this is a really nasty problem. I wonder how the intelligence of a particular animal species is being tested...?
Animals are waaaaay smarter than most people would think. I have witnessed my goldfish playing with each other, and when i arrive at the pond they all come to me, tickle my hand with their mouth and beg for food. Even after a long winter without feeding, they will still come to me in spring and ask for food. And these are GOLDFISH, the poor creatures with the so-called " 5 seconds " memory, or whatever it was......If you take care of animals yourself you will see how clever they are.

Here's something interesting.

Ants have the largest brains of all insect species. And a fact I found:

"An ant brain has about 250 000 brain cells. A human brain has 10,000 million so a colony of 40,000 ants has collectively the same size brain as a human."

www.lingolex.com...

Considering that a colony acts almost like a single entity, I find that pretty impressive. Here's a picture of an ant's brain (from several outside sources, origin unknown to me):

www.brightscience.com...

[edit on 20-11-2007 by CloudlessKnight]

African Grey Exposes Owner's Partner's Adultery

I vote for the African Grey Party!

I mean, what chimp or dolphin can top this?

A parrot owner was alerted to his girlfriend's infidelity when his talkative pet let the cat out of the bag by squawking "I love you Gary".

Mr Taylor apparently became suspicious after Ziggy croaked "Hiya Gary" when Ms Collins answered her mobile phone.

The parrot also made smooching sounds whenever the name Gary was said on TV.

Needless to say, Ziggy is an African Grey Parrot.

reply to post by soothsayer


I must say you are right about that we probably aren't the SMARTEST animals because of our destructive ways. But its because we are the most INTELLIGENT animals that we can be so destructive.

dolphins & whales
elephants
parrots & crows
octupii
apes
monkeys
humans

this is probably close to the right order too