Humans are the smartest animals, followed by great apes, whales and dolphins, elephants, parrots, and dogs and cats. Octopuses and pigs are also intelligent. Animal intelligence is still being studied.
Intelligence has been defined as the ability to achieve complex goals in complex environments. Some animals are clearly better than that at others, leading people to say they are smarter. Humans are the smartest animals on the planet. This is not talk of anthropocentric conceit: by any objective standard of coping with complexity, humans beat all other animals, hands down. Even some of the least intelligent humans can solve problems that no animal could hope for.
Aside from humans, however, the terrain gets darker. The animals most often cited as the most intelligent are chimpanzees, followed by the other great apes (gorillas and orangutans). Jane Goodall, a primatologist famous for her 45-year studies of the social and family life of Tanzanian chimpanzees, compiled a list of five of the smartest animals for USA Today:
Great apes, who learned parts of American Sign Language (ASL) and even taught it to each other. In addition, some great apes were able to perform some basic functions on specially designed computer programs, including solving some problems with colored shapes. Whales and dolphins (cetaceans) are probably the smartest in the aquatic world. Like humans, cetaceans are able to create a mental picture and communicate with their fellows over great distances, using echolocation and special clicking sounds. Some of these “songs” can be quite complex and humans cannot describe what they mean, although what has been discovered is a testament to the animals’ intelligence. Elephants are third on Goodall’s list. Like cetaceans, elephants can communicate over great distances using low frequencies that only their bulky heads can produce. As the phrase goes, “an elephant never forgets”, and it is true that the memory of these animals is remarkable. These animals even have death rituals, in which they “grieve” for their dead companions, showing a surprising amount of empathy for a non-human animal. Another group of intelligent animals, the only one on the list that isn’t a mammal, are parrots. Parrots are an order of birds that strongly pursue the “K selection strategy,” meaning that their species’ strategy is one of quality, not quantity. According to Goodall, one parrot, N’kisi, knows 971 words, where “knowing” is defined as using the word five times independently in an appropriate context, not just repeating what humans have said. Parrots are able to make comments and strike up short conversations. Last on the list are dogs and cats. To anyone who has a dog or cat, their relative intelligence is obvious. They can tell the way a human is feeling by their facial expressions and tone of voice. Both dogs and cats can be trained to perform complex tasks in many ways, even potty trained, but dogs are clearly more prone to taking orders from humans.
Among invertebrates, octopuses are often cited as the most intelligent. Pigs are another intelligent bunch, as are squirrels. Scientists are just starting to learn the ins and outs of animal intelligence, and much remains to be learned.
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