Thread: What are the smartest animals?

What are the smartest animals?

I heard that octopus are very smart ... also some squid that can totally adapt to their surrounding with neuron firings at rates much faster than possible for humans

According to a quick internet search, the list breaks down for the top 5 like this:

1.)Chimpanzee (obvious tool users and the like)
2.)Dolphin (dolphins have their own "language" that we are just beginning to unravel)
3.)Orangutan (known for strong social bonds and tool use)
4.)Elephant (well known for problem solving and a brilliant memory, even emotion)
5.)Crow (crows are smart little critters, they've been seen forming tools in up to 3 or 4 steps in order to get to food)

interesting question.i have thought about something very similar.if aliens did make contact with earth,isn t it kinda conceded to think they would only or even want to talk to us?we are not the most abundant life form,we dont have the mort simple or complex language{i read somewhere that whales have the most complex},and,most impotantly,we are the most purposly destructive.just a thought.

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 ....

Originally Posted by roncj5

interesting question.i have thought about something very similar.if aliens did make contact with earth,isn t it kinda conceded to think they would only or even want to talk to us?we are not the most abundant life form,we dont have the mort simple or complex language{i read somewhere that whales have the most complex},and,most impotantly,we are the most purposly destructive.just a thought.

It's a thought that, I think, is very appropriate. I think it is definitely plausible that, should an alien race cross the vast distances of interstellar space, they'd want to talk to everything capable of complex thought. I tend to think that if an alien species so hyperintelligent as to have the technology to venture across the stars that they would be scientists of the highest order, and would investigate everything. I also tend to think that we're not the only intelligent creature on the planet. It seems like a lot of people define intelligence strictly as "human" and little more. But whales, dolphins and the apes are all very intelligent. They may not have the ability to make spacecraft, but they're smart little critters. So I would think any alien species that, say, wanted to document intelligent life in the Universe, would find they had a lot to check out here on our little world.

The octopus is a very smart animal. I've read that when full grown, they have the intelligence of a 3 year old human. This isn't quite right though because their nervous system is wired very differently than a vertebrate. They've been shown to open jars, navigate mazes, and climb out of holding tanks into other holding tanks to eat crabs, then returning to their tank. Apparently they demonstrate short and long term memory as well. An interesting thing about the octopus nervous system is that its proprioreception is wired very differently, because tentacles, unlike jointed limbs, have an unlimited number of points of data about the position of the limb, and it would actually overload the octopus brain if it processed it like a vertebrate.

would plants be included?i recently read that in africa(could be wrong about local) a species of deer(?) where dying at a unusaul rate.the investigation determined that a tree(i wanna say acachia?)was being overgrazed and not only released toxins into it leaves but sent a chemical signal to the other trees down wind and they too produced this toxin despite not being grazed on yet. oak trees will send out a simalar message if a non-oak sapling is detected and they will "attack" the invader and kill it.are these messages a auto response or communication?how does the oak "detect" and identify the foriegn sapling?some plants have even showed have a memory for the location and direction up.could any of this be considered "intelligent" ?

kinda puts a new spin on vegitarianism!

Chimps have been shown to do a number of things that show high intelligence. They can understand language very well even though they can't speak. One of my old anthropology professors was a zookeeper, and she could tell the chimps to do things, like when one was laying in front of a door, she could tell a different one to move it. Was it just picking up on cues and noting that something was in the way of where she was going? Maybe, but as an anthropologist and primatologist I think she had more insight. Chimps are known to make crude spears to hunt for bushbabies that hide in tree hollows. They also make sponges by biting leaves together, and using the sponge to reach down in tree hollows full of water, soak some up, and drink the water from the sponge. They've also been seen using long sticks to figure water depth. The latest kind of unsettling thing they've noticed is that chimps seem to engage in warfare too. Other primates are known to use rocks as hammers and anvils to break open nuts.

Originally Posted by roncj5

would plants be included?i recently read that in africa(could be wrong about local) a species of deer(?) where dying at a unusaul rate.the investigation determined that a tree(i wanna say acachia?)was being overgrazed and not only released toxins into it leaves but sent a chemical signal to the other trees down wind and they too produced this toxin despite not being grazed on yet. oak trees will send out a simalar message if a non-oak sapling is detected and they will "attack" the invader and kill it.are these messages a auto response or communication?how does the oak "detect" and identify the foriegn sapling?some plants have even showed have a memory for the location and direction up.could any of this be considered "intelligent" ?

kinda puts a new spin on vegitarianism!

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.

Hmm. Intelligent pants. That's very cool! There's one question I have to ask, though: the intelligence seen in humans and in some animals is really just a collection of electrical impulses and chemical reactions between neurons in the brain and the rest of the body. The very limited intelligence in machines is a couple of flashes, pulses and inscriptions on pieces of silicon, tantalum and other materials. The computing power in quantum computers results from qubits (electrons, of course!) jumping from one piece of highly-cooled superconducting metal to another. Since plants have no brain-like organs and show no sign of electrical pulses or glandular chemical reactions, how do they sense light, rain, or flies landing on them, let alone the complex inter-organism communication, memory and problem solving needed to do these kinds of difficult tasks?