By now, we've discovered that most complex life forms have some form of decision-making mechanism and the ability to adapt to their surroundings. Current research focuses on figuring out how and to what extent each species does so. One way to test for self-awareness among animals is to put them in front of a mirror and see if they recognise their own reflection. The way to tell is to put a mark on the animal which they can't see without the mirror; if they see the mark and realise it's on their body, then they can recognise themselves.
- Elephants were among the first animals to pass the "mirror test". They've also been observed to have some kind of rudimentary society, including weird greetings and the Elephant Graveyard, which implies some kind of funerary rite.
- Birds can show intelligence; calling someone a "bird-brain" isn't that much of an insult (and not just for the obvious reason):
- Clever Crows, as well as other corvids like ravens and magpies, have this reputation for a reason. They not only pass the "mirror test", but they also show rudimentary skills at using tools and solving puzzles.
- The Japanese have observed interesting behaviour among crows, including a group in Kagoshima
that outsmarted the "Crow Patrol" put together specifically to get rid of them. A group in Tokyo showed its problem-solving skills by cracking open particularly tough nuts using cars — that is, they drop the nuts into a crosswalk, wait for a car to drive over them, wait for the traffic light to change, then swoop in and eat the nut. Yes, that's right, this particular group were able to understand how the traffic lights works. - Crows can vividly remember a person or location that's caused trouble. If a member of the murder is killed, they're not coming back any time soon, and in fact they'll reroute their migratory pattern to avoid landing in that area. And if they can identify a specific person who's harassed them, they not only hold a grudge, they can recognise that person and teach other crows what the person looks like.
- New Caledonian crows are so smart that even without any prior exposure to tools, they were observed fashioning a working one by watching another type of crow at a failed attempt.
- Crows understand some scientific principles. They understand water displacement, for example. They also can tell which object is the heavier of a pair by how they move in a wind tunnel, a test most primates fail (although they do fly a lot more often than primates).
- One crow was shown on camera to demonstrate that not only did it know how to solve problems, it understood the concept of a puzzle. It expended a ton of effort to obtain a stick, just because it was behind a barrier and it knew the barrier was hiding something good. Then it started looking for a place to use it.
- The Japanese have observed interesting behaviour among crows, including a group in Kagoshima
- The other candidate for "smartest bird" is the parrot, thanks to its ability to mimic human speech. Actually, they won't just mimic human speech, but also other noises as well; there are birds in Australia that can do a perfect imitation of construction equipment. But parrots can also understand some of the words they say. "Alex" the African Grey parrot was famous for being able to recognise and count objects. He also demonstrated that parrots have short attention spans and can be incredible trolls; Alex was known to deliberately give wrong answers, because he had so much fun watching his handlers' frustration when he did so.
- Alex was also the only animal to ask an existential question — asking what color he was when examining himself in a mirror.
- This account shows a group of swallows building a nest in front of a Home Depot and figuring out how to work the motion detectors to open the doors. They've also identified the individual who locks the doors at night and learned to harass that person to unlock them the next morning.
- Pigeons, while common and overlooked, are as smart as corvids and parrots, if not smarter. A pigeon can be placed anywhere on the planet, even somewhere it's never been before, and find its way home every time. It's also been discovered that they recognize human faces and can quickly determine which humans are trustworthy and which ones to avoid.
- Seagulls are similar to pigeons but more ferocious in their tactics. They've even picked up on human gender stereotypes — they've learned that women are more likely than men to drop everything and run when you attack them, so they started targeting women who appeared to be carrying something delicious to eat. This article compares them to the classic Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds.
- Clever Crows, as well as other corvids like ravens and magpies, have this reputation for a reason. They not only pass the "mirror test", but they also show rudimentary skills at using tools and solving puzzles.
- Primates tend to be thought of as "smarter", perhaps because the classification includes us humans. Chimpanzees in Africa have been observed by scientists to not only understand how to use tools, but also how to fashion them. They've also passed the "mirror test", although they often used the mirrors to admire their genitals, which is a bit more like humans than we'd be comfortable admitting. Chimps are also known to use war tactics to expand their territory. Just ask Jane Goodall about the infamous Gombe Chimpanzee War.
- Jumping spiders have shown time and time again to be incredibly intelligent despite their size:
- The Portia genus hunt other spiders. They'll observe other spiders in their webs to get a sense of how fast they are and how they react to disturbances, then determine an optimal strategy to take them down. They'll even observe a spider's mating display so that they can imitate it and attract another spider to its doom (pirate spiders can do this, too). They can also memorize chords in the web vibrations, which helps them impersonate other spiders or trapped insects. And even more amazing, they can work this out for spider species they've never met before. Two Portia spiders have even been observed coming up with separate tactics for hunting the same spider. They also have three-dimensional spatial memory - they can plot a complex route to their prey, including through places they haven't seen, and if they find an obstruction they couldn't see and didn't plan for, they can backtrack and take an alternative route. And they do all this with 600,000 neurons, barely enough to fit on the head of a pin. How do they do it? By time-sharing - they think extremely slowly, basically emulating a bigger brain on a much smaller one.
- Salticus scenicus, better known as the Zebra Spider, have shown to be capable of some level of higher complex thought when their abilities to recognize stationary predators were put to the test. They were presented with a black sphere, a black sphere with spider eyes, two dead predator species, a 3D printed much larger spider, and finally a 3D printed one without eyes — they ignored the sphere, recognized the eyes of the second but quickly learned it was no threat, fled from the 3 predator spiders, and was curious of the eyeless spider for a brief moment before fleeing. They don't just flee from large things or moving things, but recognize what it is.
- Spiders may in fact actually dream. When behavioral ecologist Daniela C. Rößler caught some of the species evarcha arcuata and noted them making small movements in their sleep, she studied some babies (which are transparent) and noted they were moving their eyesnote in the exact same manner as larger animals when experiencing R.E.M. Furthermore, they only made the small movements while experiencing the R.E.M. state and were stationary when not. Now we just need to learn if spiders dream of six-legged sheep.
- Dolphins and whales have a reputation for intelligence. Dolphins appear to pass the "mirror test" — they exhibit behaviour that they never do at other times, like flapping their fins, suggesting they're posing. The smartest dolphins are orcasnote , and check out what they can do:
- Orcas will learn to do what they can to get a snack. They will learn to follow a fishing boat and loot the net. Or they'll beach themselves to get a human's attention. They can even snatch bait fish off of longlines without getting caught in the hooks, and teach others to do it.
- Transient orca pods hunting dolphins are known to stop using their active echolocation, and indeed any noise altogether, while on the hunt. They know that their prey can pick up on their communication, so they stay "radio silent". It's Mother Nature's Hot Sub-on-Sub Action.
- One pod in Australia set up a cooperative hunting partnership with the local town's human whalers. When whales would migrate through the area, the orcas would begin herding them into the town's bay, and at least one would go to the dock and alert the humans that the whales were coming in. The orcas and humans would then work together on the hunt. And at the end of the hunt, the humans would allow the orcas to eat the lips and tongues of their catch, for which the humans had no use, and the orcas would leave the humans the more valuable blubber and baleen.
- Pods of orcas have been observed pushing baby seals back to shore, rather than eating them. It's believed that they're engaging in what is essentially livestock management, ensuring a future generation when the seal matures — and a better meal.
- Orcas off the coast of California have learned that if they turn any kind of shark upside-down, it experiences "tonic immobility" and stops moving completely. After being held for a few minutes, the shark will die from lack of oxygen, and the orcas can snack on tasty shark liver at their leisure. Thankfully, the orcas that practice this aren't big enough to try this on adult great whites, but they have killed juveniles.
- Orcas have been observed to watch their prey hop safely on an ice floe — and work together to make a wave big enough to overturn the floe and knock the prey back into the water.
- A South American pod has been observed beaching themselves to attack seals on the shoreline. They're the only pod in the world to do this, and it appears to be a skill they invented and have been observed teaching to the next generation.
- Captive orcas have been documented using the baitfish normally given to them as food to lure seagulls close to the water where they can snatch the birds.
- Put simply, orcas are not only intelligent, they're killing machines. As an old joke goes, there are no cases of wild orcas killing humans, but only because they don't leave witnessess.
- As the film Blackfish shows, orcas are capable of purposeful torture. In one incident, a captive orca pulled her trainer (Ken Peters) to the bottom of a pool over and over again, always making sure to bring him back up after a minute or so. In other words, orcas know how long terrestrial animals can survive underwater, and will take advantage of this if they want to.
- Of course cats can think. Cats Are Superior:
- Lions know that they're not big enough to take down a giraffe on their own. So they figured out that if you scare a giraffe, you can get it to run away — into traffic, where they can get hit by a car, leading to a tasty dinner with little effort. Yes, it causes traffic problems, but lions are cats — they don't care.
- Tigers are considered even smarter than lions (or at least not quite as lazy). One pair of tigers who had been raised in captivity showed an unprecedented level of cooperation when they were released into the wild: on their first day out hunting, they split up, one barrelling after a herd of deer making absolutely no effort to be stealthy and the other wandering off to who knows where. It seemed like the effort put into raising them had gone to waste — until the herd popped up right where the quiet tiger was hiding, totally stunning the conservationists who were watching them.
- Another thing that shows tigers are creepily intelligent is that they are one of the few animals (besides humans) who seek revenge. In one report in Siberia, a tiger was shot by a poacher in a non-fatal area, and also lost a deer it was hunting. The tiger was so pissed off about this that it came back to the hunter's house later on and stalked him until eventually killing him. In another report, a Bengal tiger hunted down and killed a poacher that murdered its mate for her pelt, and then it went on to attack any human it came across. It basically declared war on the human species because of one poacher.
- A popular video on YouTube shows how housecats react when they see a video of their owner using a "cat-face" filter on their smartphones. They can recognise themselves in the screen, but on seeing their owner this way, they'll freak out and start looking at their owners to double-check that they haven't turned into cats.
- Any good cat will tell you that Dogs Are Dumb. But that's not necessarily true:
- Most dogs can pass a modified version of the "mirror test" — their eyesight isn't good enough to do the straight version, but they can use smells in place of visual marks, and this shows that they're self-aware.
- A Cracked article found a pack of dogs who learned how to use the Moscow Metro. Not only did they figure out roughly when and where the trains went, they even learned to use the Rule of Cute to convince the passengers to feed them (and would share the food with the pack).
- Octopuses have proven themselves:
- An aquarium octopus, if not given puzzles and toys to distract it, will invariably occupy itself by trying to escape. Sometimes they end up in other exhibits. Sometimes they end up eating the other exhibits. In one case, a very bored octopus took to using tankmates as toys, rearranging his tank, and using carefully aimed jets of water to turn off the lights. One story on Tumblr describes an octopus who took out some of the aquarium's crustaceans by sneaking out through a hole in its tank and learning the guard's patrols like it was playing Metal Gear Solid — and others were reported to be able to do this by walking across an elevated walkway and unlocking the other tank.
- Octopuses can unscrew the lid of a jar from the inside.
- Likely averted in the case of "Psychic Paul", an octopus at the Berlin Zoo who correctly predicted the winner of nearly every fixture at the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Even the games Germany lost. It was chalked up to coincidence (probably) — not that it stopped the eventual winners Spain from offering Paul an official funeral when he died.
- An aquarium octopus, if not given puzzles and toys to distract it, will invariably occupy itself by trying to escape. Sometimes they end up in other exhibits. Sometimes they end up eating the other exhibits. In one case, a very bored octopus took to using tankmates as toys
- Crocodiles show a surprising amount of intelligence, about as much as some rodents:
- They can memorise the best places to ambush prey. In some cases, that involves stealing fish from the nets of fishing boats. Nile crocodiles hunt in packs and use teamwork to take down their prey — they can herd or surround their victims, and sometimes one croc will hold down the animal and let the others tear at it (in turn, and in equal portions).
- They can learn tricks like "stay" or "roll over". This makes them almost as intelligent as dogs. They’re not quite as good at learning not to eat their trainer though.
- At least two species (the Mugger crocodile and American alligator) have some grasp of tool usage. Scientists have observed them consistently gathering sticks during birds' nesting seasons, building nests, and balancing them on their snouts — while they wait for a hapless heron or egret to land on it.
- Monitor lizards, including Komodo dragons, are intelligent, have a natural tendency to play, can recognise names given to them, and can recognise tourists by their voices and know how to take advantage of them. In captivity, they appear to display individual personalities. They're also more than capable of strategising while hunting; they're considered to be as intelligent as wolves.
- All kinds of snakes can think:
- Constrictors (i.e. pythons, boas, and anacondas) may be more intelligent than previously thought. Research shows that they would check to make sure their prey is dead when they're constricting by checking the animal's heartbeat; they would keep squeezing until the heartbeat stops.
- Spitting cobras can aim their venom with remarkable accuracy — and given what they aim at, there's definitely some level of intelligence there.
- Black mambas, king cobras, and taipans are considered the snakes with the greatest potential for killing people, not just because of their size, toxicity, amount of venom, speed, and aggression, but also because of their intelligence. They're extremely alert and quick to react, and they're also very curious. They've shown the biggest propensity to escape confinement of any snake. This makes them extremely hard to handle, and the only reason there aren't many fatalities is that few humans have tried to handle them.
- Many big snakes, including large pythons, boas, and king cobras, can recognise their owners. And studies have shown that a snake is less likely to bite someone it can recognise. So that helps.
- Sharks and rays are highly intelligent, on the level of most mammals, including coordination and tool usage:
- A dive team in New Zealand studying bottlenose sevengill sharks had to review its safety precautions when one shark made a very obvious threatening movement toward one of the divers — and another shark tried to attack them from behind.
- Where there's intelligence, there's personality. The Monterey Bay Aquarium noticed the difference in its juvenile Great Whites — some were intensely interested in the human visitors on the other side of the glass, while others were just interested in doing a Jaws impression waiting for food.
- Moray eels are capable of inter-species communication to hunt in a coordinated manner.
- There's no way to know how intelligent dinosaurs were, but they're now believed to have been much smarter than we once thought. For years, dinosaurs were believed to be slow-witted lumbering beasts, but over the years, some species — particularly small meat-eating dinosaurs — have been discovered to probably have been at least intelligent enough to form complex social behaviors. Even Tyrannosaurus rex wasn't just one of the largest predators ever to walk the Earth — it was also pretty smart, and studies indicate that it might have been at least as intelligent as modern-day alligators, some breeds of dog, or possibly even baboons.
- The honey badger is famous not only for its sheer ferocity, but also for its intelligence. It's been documented using tools. At least one captive honey badger, named "Stoffel", has become notorious for being something of a "badger Houdini" — he's escaped his pen several times using tree branches, rocks, mud, and a rake, and with his mate he even figured out how to pick the cage's locks. It got to the point where they had to enclose him with an electric fence.
- Bees have the Hive Mind reputation, but many species, especially honeybees and bumblebees, are incredibly intelligent. They can navigate mazes by recognising colours, lighting, and landmarks. When collecting nectar, they can memorize the locations of several different flowers, remember the time of day each of them produce nectar, and find their way home from two miles away. Once home, they relay these facts to the rest of the hive by dancing. Most notably, despite the name of beekeepers, nothing is actually keeping the bees there, and they can and absolutely will abandon their nestboxes if it isn't an ideal nesting place — this implies that, unlike what Bee Movie would have you believe, they comprehend that having a giant creature pacify them with smoke and take some of their honey is an acceptable trade-off for having an ideal nesting location where they are safe from predators.
- The false cleanerfish resembles the more friendly cleanerfish. Real cleanerfish will suck the parasites off another fish's body. The false cleanerfish will lure other fish as if it were a cleanerfish, but instead it'll just bite a chunk and then retreat. Interestingly, this trick also shows the other fish's learning capacity, as it clearly works best on juveniles; adults will have learned to tell the difference between the real and the false cleanerfish.
- Pufferfish are capable of recognizing the faces (and possibly voices) of their owners. They can also be taught basic tricks, such as going to a certain part of their tank to get food. They can even be rather artistic; the male of one Japanese species is known to spend days or even weeks building elaborate circular nests◊, to attract mates and as use as nurseries — this is some of the most complex nest-building in the animal kingdom.
- Even arthropods get involved in the action! One researcher studying cockroach reproductive habits noted that her research subjects eventually learned to recognize their handlers, and act differently around them than other humans.
- Housepets, especially dogs, have been known to seek help when their owners are in trouble:
- There's at least one story of a housecat who learned how a baby monitor worked and yowled into it to alert her owner that her baby was having serious trouble breathing, which saved the baby's life.
- Some pet owners have built sound boards for their pets, using buttons to represent words and simple phrases. Cats and dogs are actually pretty good at understanding human language, and they can even hold basic conversations with their owners with the boards. This becomes especially apparent if a button for a key word fails; the pet will use working buttons to construct a phrase that means something similar (or else bother their owner that the button's not working).
- For most of history, we've assumed that plants don't (and can't) think, but 21st-century research is showing that many plants do have some kind of intelligence. Various species have been observed to respond to stimuli and classical conditioning, learn and then retain what they've learned for at least a month, and communicate danger to nearby plants.
- Even humans do it! It's most obvious with babies and toddlers, who can understand complex language well before they can reproduce it — if you underestimate them because they can't talk yet, they'll outsmart you and make you feel real stupid. But it's a common pattern throughout — humans have a tendency to misconstrue lack of verbal response for lack of intelligence and be surprised when they find out otherwise.
- Frogs and toads are significantly more intelligent than often thought. One example is that some have learned insects are attracted to artificial light, and will hang around near buildings to take advantage of that fact.
- Hyenas have a complex, simian-like social structure. They may even be better at cooperating and teaching than many primate species — given a task where two animals must tug at separate ropes simultaneously to get a food reward, but only one knows the trick, the hyenas were faster than primates at teaching their buddy how to do it. This is likely because hyenas hunt together and so need a "language" for cooperating and coordinating an attack, while most primate food is fairly lazy fruit, and the most you need to be able to say to share with a friend is "Here is food".
- Pigs can be taught how to play basic games like basketball or even simple video games similar to Pong.
- While the question of whether they're actually thinking is somewhat existential, modern AI can demonstrate a surprising degree of brilliance in their solutions to problems. For example, in one game playing AI based around stacking items? It quickly figured out the best way to win isn't to stack the items- it's to manipulate the camera angles so the human watching it thinks the items are stacked.
