7 of the Smarts Animals On Earth

Humans may have the power of consciousness, but we are not the lonely smart beings on the planet. Some animals are actually quite smart, even when you least expect them to be. Scientist noticed that animals are also capable of solving problems, giving them a lot of edge in the wild.

Here are some of the smartest animals.

Bees

According to researchers, bees have a sort of kaleidoscopic memory d the flowers they see in the environment, which helps them figure out which flowers are the best to feed on. They also self-medicate inside their hives. They’re also great engineers, creating complex hives with honeycomb structures that we even use as an inspiration for a number of buildings.

Octopus

They might have squishy tentacles, but don’t let these fool you. Octopuses are very intelligent animals. They spread cultural information, communicate through colors, flashing, and patters, and even mimic others. Octopuses also have an advanced navigational abilities and spatial learning capacity. Their tentacles act like fingers that can manipulate objects.

Elephants

The largest mammal on land also has highly evolved social skills, much like us humans. Elephants are able to shoe loving and compassionate behavior to their family members. They also have amazing memory skills and can remember enemies and friends for 50 years or more. They even have their own form of communication.

Ants

These tiny creatures are absolutely amazing team players. Along with their social skills, the also show a great amount of individual intelligence. They’re great navigators and can remember lengthy routes. Studies on ants show that they know how to care and become altruistic amongst members of their colony.

Dolphins

Dolphins have long interest researchers.  They have a certain communication system, identify themselves in the mirror, and are creative in finding new ways to capture fish. Like humans, they are also very social and work together as a team. Wild dolphins are also known to help herd fish into fishermen nets, expecting their share afterwards.

Crows

Crows are one of the smartest birds on the planet. They are able to use analogies and counting to solve problems. They can take on higher-order, relational-matching task spontaneously. Crows also use tools to finish tasks. Studies have also shown that crows are able to comprehend the Archimedes principle, which successfully abled them to access food by manipulating water levels.

Anole

Lizards don’t really get a lot of recognition for cognitive abilities, but the Anole has impressed researchers with their intelligence.  They demonstrate that they know how to count, and they have advance problem solving and learning skills. They also have extraordinary memories.

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Crows Think Like 7 Year Old Kids on Volume and Water Displacement

New Caledonian crows or corvids, which are already known as one of the world’s most intelligent birds, actually have more to brag about when it comes to smarts. A recent study showed that these birds have comprehensions about water that matches a 7 to 10 year old human child.

 The story about the crow and the pebbles actually has some kind of truth behind it. a study by UC Santa Barbara professor Dr.Corina Logan showed that these birds have a higher understanding with space and measurement. Crows are able to identify differences between levels of water and the displacement that happens when solids are placed inside the containers. The study used tubes with water and a floating treat to see if the crows were able to choose the best items to help displace the water and make the treat float closer to the opening. It showed that the crows chose items that could displace more water. According to Dr. Logan, they have strong evidence that the birds use a cause-and-effect assessment to know how the water is displaced.

Intelligence has always been a well-known feature amongst crows, but New Caledonian’s are known to be the smartest amongst the species. The University of Auckland has even set up a number of aviaries to specifically study what these crows are capable of doing. Dr. Logan had worked for one but she wanted to see what wild crows were able to do. The birds from the aviary could have learned a thing or two from previous test so she caught specimens from the wild and set them free after conducting the water displacement test.

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Crows solve Aesop's fable puzzles, offer clues to cognition

(Reuters) - A species of crow native to islands east of Australia has long wowed scientists with its intelligence, and now it has shown it can solve at least one puzzle as well as the average 7-year-old child, scientists reported on Wednesday.

Like other research on the cognitive abilities of nonhuman animals, the study sheds light on the evolution of intelligence and whether disparate cognitive capacities develop in lockstep or at radically different rates between species. The results suggest that an understanding of cause and effect evolved fairly early.
Source: Here

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Crows Reason Like Young Children

Crows and their relatives — ravens, jays, magpies, and rooks — are famous in folklore and myth for their intelligence as well as their enigmatic stare. Current science can explain and provide evidence that suggest crows can think and reason like a young child, a new study finds. Based on Aesop’s fable The Crow and the Pitcher, researchers from the University of Auckland tested New Caledonian crows’ understanding of water displacement and how to use this to solve a problem. In the fable, a crow drops pebbles into a pitcher that is half-filled with water. It continues to drop pebbles until the water level is high enough for the crow to drink. Likewise, the experiment required the crows to do the same to get a reward, which is a piece of meat attached to a floating cork.

Researchers put six New Caledonian crows through six different experiments that involved water displacement. After the birds were given a week of training, they passed four of the tests, which include dropping stones into a water-filled tube rather than a sand-filled one, dropping sinking objects instead of floating ones, dropping things into a tube that has a higher water level than a lower one, and using solid things instead of hollow ones.

Source: Here

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Bird: Crow

Crows are noisy, scary-looking bullies, which, in the animal world, usually signals intelligence. The crow is perhaps the best problem-solver of the group, but it's also a very fast learner. In a recent experiment, crows were found to remember and communicate the faces of individual people who were thought of as a threat. By the end of the experiment, the person who had wronged one crow found himself the enemy of all crows on campus--even though he had interacted with hardly any of them.

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