Thread: What are the smartest animals?

Originally Posted by Ross Makoske

Interesting, do you have a source for this?

ALARM SCENT WARNS OTHER TREES TO KILL « spectre footnotes
i have heard theories that the root system could act ,in part,as a nervous system.
http://www.wired.com/science/discove...e_intelligence

Wolves are also amazingly intelligent animals. They're known to take bites of snow when hunting to mask the presence of their breath, or store caches of half-eaten limbs and then carry them around the pack showing the others how to chase the prey animal the limb came from, randomly swinging the limb at one of the other wolves to show it how to avoid a counterattack. Mid-ranking wolves are also known to eat different parts of a carcass at different times so that when they scent mark it gives the appearance of there being more wolves than there are. They also accomplish a similar illusion by changing the vocal pitch of certain howls and yapping/barking/yipping to give the sense of there being more wolves in a given pack.

Originally Posted by tom

I think it depends on how we define intelligence. There supposedly is some sea creature related to a squid that can camaflogue itself VERY quickly. So if we define intelligence as processing power of the brain that creature processes loads of information extremely quickly.

This is not the "typical" human centric definition for intelligence but ....

The homocentric definition of intelligence should be a subset of a group of speciocentric definitions where each species has its own definition and it is recognized that ours is only a very limited set of overall possibilities.

My dog could put together an intelligence test that neither you nor I could pass. By blindly comparing our form of intelligence to his we are comparing apples to oranges, so to speak. We might call his definition caninocentric because it is unique to his species. We are as stupid in his world as he appears to be in ours. It is only just recently that this idea is gaining recognition in the science community.

Forty years ago when I wanted to be one of "them", the so called scientists called me very unflattering names for even suggesting such a thing. Well, the few that would even read what I wrote. Not all scientists practice "science" or even believe in its basic tenets. This makes it difficult for laymen to tell good science from pseudoscience. A lot of science today has been tweaked to improve ratings, gain or maintain funding or just sell books.

Originally Posted by Ross Makoske

Interesting, do you have a source for this? Kinda reminds me of The Happening.

There's a plant called an Indian Pipe that can't photosynthesize. It gets resources by siphoning them through other plant roots, via fungus connection between the two. Is that a form of intelligence? If you define intelligence as the ability to learn and understand, it seems that in your example and this one, there is some kind of understanding of what's going on around them or they wouldn't be changing in beneficial ways, but not in the conscious way an organism with a brain does. On the other hand, you could also say that the reason that they are the way they are is purely due to evolution caused by random mutation and selection pressure.

Many years ago I tried in vain to summit a mathematical proof that although survival of the fittest, natural selection, holds, mutation is not random. After much name calling, it was summarily rejected. Today however it has been shown experimentally that the mutation of bacteria is selective and not random when developing immunity to an antibiotic.

In theory science is objective. In practice it is a matter of faith and cultural bias. If the science culture or community is not ready to believe an idea, they will not even consider it. Had they known to look for selective mutation forty years ago medical science would be way ahead of where it is now. But at the time they were so afraid of the creationists that they lumped my proof with creationism and stumbled around in the darkness, blinded by the light. Now that the power of the creationists has dwindled they are coming back, slowly, to reality.

wayne ,i completely agree.

This is a pretty cool thread. So heres a bump and a question. When people speak of intelligence it usually seems to boil down to intelligence being measured by social/communication complexity, and ability to use tools. Would it be reasonable to gauge reletive intelligence based on a animals ability to take in information from it's surroundings, foreshadow, and plan ahead? Say a mouse saw it's pal get killed by classic mouse-trap, next time that mouse saw a mousetrap, would it know to stay away? Also, would it be reasonable to gauge intelligence in animals on it's ability to learn? If i saw that a mouse learned to stay away from traps, from seeing one of it's own get killed by a trap...i'd have to admit, thats a pretty smart mouse.

i think one has to consider the life form being talked about.