It Can Think

"GRAAAHHH- *cough* My apologies, I had something in my throat."

[Operations deck is plunged into darkness]
Ripley: They cut the power...
Hudson: What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!

— Aliens

Our heroes are battling the fearsome Monster of the Week. Maybe it's got acid for blood, or More Teeth than the Osmond Family, or can violate the laws of physics with ease. But gradually our heroes realize something even more terrifying. This creature isn't just some mindless predator. In fact, it could be just as smart as they are...

During discussions of this trope, the building and agricultural activities of ants may come up.

It can evoke What Measure Is a Non-Human? to the viewers, often involuntarily, whenever the monster turns out to be as intelligent as a human being (i.e. pretty likely sapient). Nevertheless, the existence of this trope can mean that the antagonist had a motivation or goal simple enough to be mistaken for the behavior of a mere animal, so that many of its scenes could be acted by a Non-Malicious Monster without much difference. Until it does something unexpected.

Smarter Than You Look and Obfuscating Stupidity are the human equivalents. Not Even Human is this trope's inverse (a thing that seemed to have intelligence at first is revealed not to). See also dehumanization for when non-human creatures’ ability to think intelligently is dismissed because they are not human. The Non-Malicious Monster is an aversion, a creature that is led by instinct and not any advanced thought.

Compare Monster Is a Mommy, similar in terms of humans underestimating the motives of "monsters". See also Super-Persistent Predator and Suspiciously Stealthy Predator.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Bakugan Battle Brawlers, the Bakugan (actually aliens from another world turned Card Game) are sentient beings who had their self-awareness suppressed due to negative energy. When they regain their sanity, the forces of darkness try to crush them... In the New Vestroia season, there is a government conspiracy lead by the King of the Vestals to keep the fact that Bakugan are self-aware a secret from the rest of the population.
• Dragon Ball Z: Typically, Saiyans are reduced to mindless, destructive animals when they become Great Apes. When Vegeta becomes one during his fight with Goku in the Saiyan Saga, however, he retains all of his higher reasoning and intelligence, and can even speak. It isn't clear why this is the case; theories range from Goku's brain-damage and Gohan's half-breed nature interfering with the transformation, to Vegeta simply having been properly trained growing up in how to use the Great Ape transformation.
  • Kid Buu, the most primal of the forms of Majin Buu displays a degree of cunning you wouldn't expect. While he's incapable of speech like Fat and Super Buu and only hollers like a wild animal he is a lot smarter than you'd think. If his arm gets cut off he can use the appendage to attack an opponent when they least expect it, if he is hit by a barrage of blasts and pinned down, he'll break his body apart and reform himself elsewhere. And as shown when he fought The South Kaioshin, if an enemy manages to be strong enough to actually defeat him, he'll absorb him into his body.
• Dragon Ball GT: When Baby transforms into the Golden Great Ape, he initially goes on a rampage, but soon we find out that he's merely faking it. Since Baby is a parasitic lifeform, he's the one who is in control of Vegeta's body, and therefore Baby's mind is not affected by the transformation because it only affects Vegeta's body, not Baby himself.
• The ELS in Gundam 00: A Wakening of the Trailblazer are at first somewhat single-minded and simplistic in action, and some of the characters in the series remain unconvinced that they are truly sentient until, near the end, the ELS are observed adapting their tactics and countering the humans' strategies in battle. One character even exclaims "They're learning!"
• Macross:
  • The Vajra encountered in Macross Frontier come off as a bit of a scientific dilemma: they're spacefaring critters with apparently eusocial behavior that can overpower starships, but they themselves have little centralization in their nervous systems (i.e. "no brains"). At first it isn't clear if they even communicate with each other. Only later, when they started using complex military tactics and began reacting to Ranka's and Sheryl's singing, was it made clear that they have some sort of guiding intellect. In the end, it was obvious: the Vajra aren't individuals per-se, they're more like individual cells. The "Vajra" organism is, in fact, the entire species, spread throughout the Galaxy, and communicating with itself via cellular-level Subspace Ansibles.
  • The Space Whales from Macross Dynamite 7 are initially thought to just be animals. Very big, very powerful animals, but nonetheless just animals. The poachers trying to kill them are the first to notice that the Whales can identify who is a threat and choose their targets according (they do not harm the good guys, who are trying to protect them), while everyone else seems to realize they're smarter than they look when Basara sings to them and they start singing back.
• Mazinger Z: In the Mazinger-Z vs Great General of Darkness, when Kouji faces Mykene's War Beasts for first time, he -accostumed to the mindless, silent drones that Dr. Hell used- gets utterly shocked when they begin talking to him. Quickly learns that that is not the only difference with the Mechanical Beasts. They are intelligent, capable to think on their own, devise complex strategies, fight coordinatedly and even lay traps. Oh, and they are pretty cunning, too (they dragged and dunked Mazinger in the ocean, knowing that his robot's mobility is crap underwater, unlike the aquatic Beast that was waiting for him).
  Kouji: It talks!
• In Attack on Titan, several unique Titans show signs of having intelligence, in contrast to most that are little more than mindless animals. This makes sense, since they are actually people capable of transforming into a Titan form and therefore maintain their human intelligence.
  • During the battle of Trost, Eren realizes that the Colossal Titan is moving strategically by kicking the door in (to let the smaller Titans in) and then smashing the defensive cannons on the wall (to decrease resistance).
  • The Rogue Titan, which kills other Titans instead of humans, puts up its fists in a boxer's stance and knows to crush the nape of a foe's neck to kill it for good. The Rogue Titan is Eren.
  • Armin realizes that the Female Titan is trying to capture a certain member of the Survey Corps, after it lifts up his hood to examine his face instead of killing him straight away. It is revealed that Eren is the target, and later that Annie is the Female Titan.
  • Hange realized that some Titans must be intelligent after discovering a notebook left behind by a dead soldier in which the soldier reported that a Titan tried to talk to her.
• School-Live! has a zombie, Megu-nee, who was the only adult and the Sensei-chan Cool Big Sis, that regains its humanity for a time period. While she's scratching at the door trying to get to the students her adult instincts kick in and she tries to hide herself in order to avoid attacking them. She locks herself in the basement but eventually turns full-zombie and ends up Killed Off for Real. It's heartbreaking. Although it's implied that even when she's fully turned, the fact that she can pull off a very disconcerting Slasher Smile upon attacking the group implies that there is still some form of thinking going on inside her necrotic brain.
• If you only watched the first few episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion you might be forgiven for thinking the Angels are just brainless gigantic monsters. As the series goes on however, more and more Angels attempt new strategies (usually ones that would let them counter or bypass the Evangelion units), with some even seemingly being capable of communication with humans. This culminates with Kaworu, an angel who's essentially identical to a human.
• Akakabuto, the Big Bad of Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin, is shown to be a very intelligent bear. He knows how to ambush hunters without giving them a chance to fire at him, or stands at a distance that negates clear shots, uses other bears as territory guards, builds himself a fortress of rocks and can predict certain attacks the dogs attempt towards him. In the manga, he can even talk, though in a language different from the dogs'.
• Tae in Zombieland Saga starts out as a typical Romero-style zombie, but over time she learns through imitating her bandmates. By the end of Season One, she's capable of learning synchronized dancing, can follow simple instructions, has tried lying (badly), and is capable of basic problem solving. She's still prone to chewing whatever she can get her hands on, though.
• The title beasts of Goblin Slayer. Though far from tactical geniuses, Goblins have a surprising deviousness and evil cunning that not many experienced adventures believe, and not many new adventures (Who often take killing them as an easy early quest) are aware of. Complete with traps, poisoned weapons, large Hobgoblins when things get hairy and so on. Their cunning nature frequently spells doom for new adventures who see them as an easy starting foe. Goblins can also develop into more specialized and intelligent breeds whether through natural development or through being empowered by other beings:
  • Goblin Shamans are capable of using magic after being temporarily possessed by a minor demon.
  • Goblin Lords are heralded as the kings of the Goblin race. These Goblins are capable of long-term planning and strategy and can organize goblins into an army. They tend not to be slouches in physical combat either.
  • Volume 5 introduces the Goblin Paladin, a goblin blessed by the God of Wisdom. Not only is he a powerful warrior, he's even smarter than a Goblin Lord.
  • Volume 8 introduces a Goblin Priest who has been similarly divinely empowered.
• Inuyasha: Kagura initially mistakes her brother Goshinki to be a large and mindless demon who only cares about eating humans and cattle, but he immediately proves her wrong by revealing that he can read her mind. When Kagome and her friends fight him, Goshinki's nature as a Genius Bruiser and Lightning Bruiser'' becomes too much for them to handle by normal means, as he's too cunning and knows exactly how to counter them with his mind reading. Ironically, he's killed by Inuyasha who awakened into his full demon form whose only thought process is killing, which makes Goshinki's mind reading ability useless because he can't predict what an enemy is going to do who can't even think straight.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stands typically don't demonstrate their own will since they're visual manifestations of their user's Psychic Powers. However some of them like Echoes ACT 3, Sex Pistols, Spice Girl and Gold Experience Requiem demonstrate their own will, although in many cases they are still completely obedient to their user, and their independent actions are to help them. If they demonstrate any personality, it typically reflects their user in some way, such as Purple Haze's viciousness and animalistic behavior being reflective of Fugo's pent up anger.
  • Anubis, Cheap Trick, and Milagro Man go one step further, and are parasitic, causing negative effects to the User.
  • In Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable, there are a pair of stand-using rats, one of which Jotaro names "Bug-Eaten". Over the course of the battle, Bug-Eaten learns to hide its tracks, lures Josuke and Jotaro into a valley so it can take advantage of the high ground, repurposes rat traps to startle Josuke out of cover, and even ricochet shots so that they can hit Jotaro even after he dodges in stopped time.
  • Part 6's Foo Fighters is on another level entirely, where the Stand and the user are one. At one point, it even waxes philosophical about Fred Hoyle's theories about the origins of life, in explaining how it came to be.
  • This reaches a new level in Part 8 with Wonder of U, a Stand which, while subordinate to its user, has a mind of its own so complete that when it takes human form it's mistakenly believed to be its own user for much of the story, and even survives his death, going on to act on its own accord.
• My Hero Academia: When first introduced in the story, the Nomu are basically zombies made from people who have had multiple Quirks implanted in them, and any semblance of personality or rational thought they once had being completely removed save for doing whatever anyone in the League of Villains tell them to do. The first Nomu is able to be easily contained after its defeat, despite nearly being a match for All Might, since it's more or less catatonic without anyone around to give it orders. Then comes the first High-End Nomu which not only possesses multiple powerful Quirks but is also capable of rational thought and strategic thinking to the point where it took everything the top two heroes in Japan could muster just to bring it down.
• Tales of Wedding Rings implies this with the Giant Spider in chapter 43. When it captures most of the group and strings them up in its webbing, it goes out of its way to blindfold Amber and pin Saphir against her chest, meaning that Amber can't fire her Chest Blaster without hitting—and likely vaporizing—Saphir.

Comic Books

• In Astro City the Living Nightmare has long been a being fueled by rage and fear, a mindless creature who goes on rampages. In one storyline, the Nightmare is controlled by Dr. Dominax into attacking the Honor Guard. In the middle of the battle, however, the Nightmare suddenly screams out No More! and stalks off.
  Hummingbird: It...it talks now?
  • It seems after all these years of living among minds and absorbing fear, the Nightmare has finally achieved a level of self-awareness. It ends up capturing Dominax and accepts Honor Guard's offer to work with them to understand more of this new found intelligence.
• Avengers: No Surrender: Initially, with the just-revived Hulk, the characters (and audience) are led to assume this one's stuck in a permanent state of Unstoppable Rage. Which, in fairness, he is. But then, during a fight with Vision, he powers through his attacks and crushes Vision's head.
  Immortal Hulk: Hh. "Mindless."
• Doomsday, the only one to ever canonically kill Superman, is a deconstruction whenever it comes to pass. Normally, he's barely an animal, just striking at all life it can see and aiming to murder everything that isn't himself, because of a deep-seated primal fear that everything out there is trying to kill him; utterly impossible to reason with and Too Dumb to Fool. Whenever he gets actual intellect, he quickly becomes easy to trick, and even easier to drive away because he actually develops doubt and a crippling fear of death, when he doesn't just stop to think about why he's killing everything in sight; he's come to much less dangerous conclusions that way.
• Inverted in Robert Kirkman's Destroyer miniseries, where Keane battles a giant monster and brutally rends it limb from limb with his inhuman strength. Later he reveals that only after he'd torn its tongue out did he realize it was only about as intelligent as a dolphin (as opposed to the terrorists and supervillains he's much more sanguine about killing) and meant no actual harm, guiltily likening the experience to beating a dog.
• Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors: After Jason is healed of his injuries, the heroes attempt to lure him into a trap. Jason almost falls for it... but then wags his finger at the heroes, as if to say "not this time".
• MonsterVerse: In Godzilla Awakening, when a piece of Shinomura escapes its tank in Monarch's HQ, it forms a tendril and pulls the same lever on the other side of the glass which the Monarch staff had previously thrown to feed it radiation, enabling it to regrow its massive form.
• Atomic Robo: Not only can The Shadow From Beyond Time call Robo by name, but every time it appears, it comes up with smarter and smarter tactics. The first time, it shows up over a secluded stretch of land and gets blasted out of the sky. The second time, it hides in H.P. Lovecraft and reveals itself in a populated area, but gets blown up by Robo driving a car into it with overclocked lightning guns. The third time, it goes airborne so Robo can't drive a car into it, and possesses an entire town while leaving them just enough sentience that Robo can't fight them in good conscience. The fourth time, Robo predicts where it's going to be through a mathematical formula and traps it in a cage, but it escapes by possessing the insects in the surrounding area. The fifth and (possibly) final time, it shows up six years ahead of the formula's projections by manifesting itself in Louis and Martin's quantum decomputer.
• Though the titular Technically Living Zombies of Crossed initially seem incapable of any tactic more complex than "rush in screaming and savage whatever can be reached", they actually retain their skills, knowledge, and intellect and will make use of them. Many times in the series, characters try to handle them in the same fashion as classical zombies, only to end up blindsided when the Crossed drive through their barricades in vehicles or shoot them with infected bullets. This is taken even further with "super-Crossed", which possess the impulse control to strategize and prioritize survival—one super-Crossed was considered a terrifying threat because he could read a book.

Fan Works

• In Stars Above, the Nine are revealed as Demons that can think, plan, and work together, making them far more human than the animalistic Demons that Homura has faced before.
• Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness: Ghouls are stated to be nothing but mindless animals who can only think of what to kill next. When Tsukune manifests a ghoul as a Superpowered Evil Side in Acts II and III, the others are shocked to discover that Tsukune's ghoul form, though completely Ax-Crazy, has its own personality and conscious mind, and not only can it think and plan, but it can talk.
• The Shroud of Sonic X: Dark Chaos are a Non-Malicious Monster Necromorph-esque parasite race. That changes in Episode 60 which reveals that the Shroud are led by hyper-intelligent Shroud Primes. And then in Episode 69, Dark Tails evolves them to the point that they start using military tactics and language and religion; they begin worshiping Dark Tails as their god.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide: In chapter 10, the main characters fight a shape-shifting Eldritch Abomination. When Misato realizes that it baited them, Ritsuko tries to argue that it's impossible because Angels don't think like humans do. Of course the creature is not really an Angel.:
  Misato: The bastard knew we would try to intercept it. It baited us.
  Ritsuko: Impossible. It doesn't think like that. It is not a predator. It doesn't--
• During the Kyuubi "attack" on Konoha in The Empty Cage, Sarutobi gets his first inkling that the bijuu aren't mindless animals when Kyuubi fires a Bijudama, not at the village he was allegedly attacking, but at the ninja who were gathering their chakra to attack him.
• Black As Night makes this clear for Toothless, who not only seems to understand the implications of Hiccup’s blindfold, but later learns to make specific sounds when in flight so that Hiccup can adjust the fin and avoid crashing into anything, to the point that he even seems to repeat Astrid's name at least once.
• In "Upon the North", not only have the dragons apparently been reincarnated along with their human partners, but Toothless is able to telepathically communicate with Hiccup- referring to his returned rider as ‘Half of Me’- and Hiccup notes that Toothless is now Alpha through the choice of the other dragons rather than his old ability to command them.
• This Bites!:
  • Perona freaks out when she realizes it wasn't Baron Omatsuri's crew inviting everyone to the island, but Lily Carnation.
  • Chopper had used a formula to increase his intelligence, creating a mad doctor personality eager to dissect and experiment. This persona rests within his subconsiousness, so when Cross suggests using a flat empty island to train his Monster Point, Chopper brings up the possibility that the raw instincts of that form will have access to greater intelligence. When Chopper is forced to use his Monster Point against Kumadori, the out-of-control form, while not as intelligent as his mad doctor self, is still capable of adaptating to situations, meaning any tactic that Franky uses to push him into the sea will not work twice.
• Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters: The Samurai Khan, unlike their cousins, are intelligent enough to adapt to the pace and fighting style of the enemies that they fight. And when Ikazuki takes full control of his host Aldarn, they hoist their katana up in the air and appear to cheer, freaking Cornelia out with how human their behavior is.
• A Possible Encounter for a Phantom: Vlad Plasmius resurrected an ancient dragon beast called a Terakon that both Danny Phantom and Kim Possible both have to contend with. However, despite all evidence to the contrary, only Danny seems to recognize the Terakon appears smarter than it leads on, with its expressions, behavior and the implication it can talk.
• White Sheep (RWBY): Discussed. While the Creatures of Grimm are described as "mindless," even the youngest Grimm demonstrate basic instincts such as pack behavior; as Professor Oobleck notes, if they were truly mindless they would operate completely randomly. Not to mention that Grimm get smarter with age, and eventually even become intelligent enough to understand human speech. Oobleck says that this started out as propaganda, a myth spread to convince young Huntsmen that they could easily best the Grimm with their superior intelligence and training. At some point, even the people in charge forgot that the Grimm were anything more than mindless beasts.
• In Honoka's Bizarre Adventure, the girls of µ have seen Stands as extensions of their users, like with Honoka's [All Star] and Hanayo's [Momoiro Clover]. So they are all caught off guard in chapter 8 when they meet Nico Yazawa's Stand [Circus], which is not only sentient but can manifest herself outside of Nico's control.
• Vow of the King: Ichigo's Hollow form acts like The Berserker but it's still capable of tactics when it needs to. After getting fed up with Shinji's shikai, it intentionally causes its own Cero to misfire and detonate, blasting the entire area at once.
• Shadows over Meridian: When the battle for Cavigor is at its end and Vathek is surrounded by the Razor Khan, he asks them in desperation to tell Jade that Elyon wants to bury the hatchet and make amends with her. The Shadowkhan actually take the time to hear him out and silently debate on whatever to just follow the orders of Frost, who's able to summon them only because Jade allows it, or take Vathek to their Queen and let her decide if his words are worth her time.

Film — Animated

• Fantastic Planet: Draags notice that humans (whom they call Oms) can speak and imitate their speech, but they doubt that Oms are actually intelligent. They treat Oms as pets and pests.
• Ice Age:
  • Cretaceous and Maelstrom of Ice Age: The Meltdown are prehistoric monsters who, despite not being able to talk, show they are capable of thinking and express either joy or anger at the heroes when trying to eat them.
  • Rudy the albino baryonyx in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is smart enough to hold a grudge against an individual weasel, named Buck. While the characters in the movie are all animals, the dinosaurs are depicted with more or less animalistic intelligence, unlike the more anthropomorphized protagonists.
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: The giant from the opening utilizes a bell from a nearby tower as a makeshift flail once it sees Puss racing towards it from the other end of town, and even launches him off of the rope by cracking it to make it ripple.

Film — Live-Action

• The unnamed xenomorphs in the Alien series.
  • In Alien, the alien drone pretends to block Ripley's path to the shuttle, causing her to go and try to disable the Nostromo's self-destruct, while the Alien hides in the shuttle and he waits until Ripley returns and enters with him to escape in the shuttle. The Alien manages to hide in the shuttle, unseen by Ripley by blending his biomechanical body with the pipes and wall of the ship. When Ripley discovers that the Alien is on board the ship with her, the Alien does not attack or chase Ripley and he uses his second jaw and seems to determine that Ripley has nowhere to go. The Alien believes that Ripley poses no threat to him (until Ripley pisses him off with the steam vents).
  • In Aliens, the power is cut off moments before the aliens attack. In a later scene, Ripley engages in some nonverbal negotiation with the Queen Alien, threatening the Queen's eggs. The Queen clearly comprehends Ripley's threat and calls for her warriors to back off to prevent it. She's also able to operate the lift to pursue Ripley. The only thing they didn't understand was that overloading atmospheric processor...
  • In Alien: Resurrection, the captive xenomorph immediately realises the connection between the blasts of cold-gas that hit it and the Big Red Button, backing off the instant the scientist moves to hit it a second time. This later serves to bite the ass of a security mook. Likewise the aliens wait till communications are cut off (during security's fight with the mercenaries) before implementing their escape. They also notice that the Big Red Button was locked up at the time. They later lay a trap by herding the humans towards their egg room. Plus, the xenomorphs seem to be aware of the acidity of their blood as two xenomorphs kill another, with the blood corroding a hold in the floor for the rest to escape.
  • AVP: Alien vs. Predator shows the Xenomorphs can work around predator setups just as well as human rigs. When the queen realized she couldn't get out of the shackles, she called back all of her offspring and ordered them to attack her so that her blood would corrode the shackles and free her.
• In the horror film Animal, the monster pursues the cast to a cabin in the woods. At first it seems that it's simply a bloodthirsty beast, but it gradually becomes clear that the creature purposely herded them into the cabin to trap them and pick them off one by one.
• Army of the Dead: the zombies in this film come off as surprisingly fast, smart, agile and organized when the team faces them, as noted by Lily "The Coyote".
• The Killer Gorillas of Congo. Even more apparent in the original Michael Crichton novel where the apes use stone clubs, cross an electric fence by dropping a tree on it, and were able to guard the mines they guard for hundreds of years because they taught their descendants how to do it.
  Munro: "I think they're smart — they're too damn smart."
  • They still have enough animal in them, however, for the protagonist's normal gorilla pet/companion/ally to fool them into not attacking her teacher/owner by acting like he's her baby.
• Creature from the Black Lagoon: The titular creature leaves no doubt about his planning abilities when he builds a dam out of branches to keep the team from leaving the titular lagoon.
• In Cube, this is applied to a structure instead of a monster, but it still fits the purposes of the trope. The protagonists openly wonder if the Cube is watching them and calculating. According to the sequels, there are human operators.
• Dance of the Dead: Two zombies carjack Jimmy's pizza van while he is arguing with Kyle. Also, one of the zombies at the prom still manages to spike the punch.
• Part of what makes the werewolves in Dog Soldiers so dangerous is that they're considerably more intelligent and strategic than most werewolves in media. Throughout the film, the werewolves demonstrate this several times, including...
  • Taking a cue from Aliens' Xenomorphs, the werewolves cut the power to the house before their first major assault, since they can see in the dark, and the humans can't.
  • When Joe is firing at one with a shotgun during the aforementioned assault, it snatches the weapon out of his hands and tries to shoot him with it.
  • After being stabbed through the abdomen with a sword and escaping, Captain Ryan ambushes Cooper in the cellar, and seems more interested in beating the shit out of Cooper with his superior strength, rather than just eating him or infecting him, and nearly succeeds in killing Cooper by pinning him against a support pole and trying to force the tip of the sword through Cooper's mouth, until Sam intervenes.
• Deep Blue Sea: There's an underwater facility housing intelligent sharks. The sharks pulled a Batman Gambit on the humans, herding them around so they'd flood the complex and sink it low enough for the sharks to escape! They even (possibly) learned how to turn an oven on while one of the humans was in it.
• At one point late in Deep Rising, the monsters start herding the remaining humans towards their feeding area. This is because the monsters aren't giant worms but the tentacles of an intelligent octopoid. At several points, it sure is taking its sweet time creeping out its prey before actually eating them. Later, when Finnegan comes face to face with the creature, it grabs him with one of its tentacles, then inquisitively brings him up to its face to inspect him.
• Godzilla has shown a surprising amount of intelligence in several films.
  • Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster: We find out here that Godzilla and Rodan are both much more intelligent than the earlier films let on, able to hold a fairly complex psychic conversation with Mothra and explain their stances on initially refusing to fight Ghidorah just to save the puny humans that keep shooting them in the face with missiles. Up until now they were generally treated as mindless animals lashing out instinctively, rather than self-aware beings with opinions and agendas.
  • Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II: Godzilla gets curbstomped in the first fight with Mechagodzilla where he mainly used his Atomic Breath which didn't effect Mechagodzilla. During the rematch, he only uses his atomic breath for a Beam-O-War before rushing into melee and beating Mechagodzilla down. He only starts using it again when Super Mechagodzilla is formed and stays out of melee range.
  • Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla: One of the larger showings of Godzilla's intelligence in the Heisei Era: he's the one to figure out Spacegodzilla's absorbing cosmic energy through his crystals and the city's tower and they need to be destroyed in order to defeat him. He also figures out that Spacegodzilla's shoulder crystals are his Achilles' Heel and start targeting them, prompting MOGUERA's crew to comment that he's much smarter than they thought.
  • Godzilla (1998): When Godzilla is tailed by three helicopters, he successfully managed to fool them into thinking he is hiding in a skyscraper, cue him bursting from the building behind them and initiating Curb-Stomp Battle. The final helicopter is destroyed when Godzilla crouches low to avoid being seen by it before devouring said helicopter whole. During the battle in the Hudson River, while being attacked by three U.S. Navy submarines, Godzilla swims straight at one of the subs, using the dorsal spines on his back to rip open the sub's hull, leaving it dead in the water and helpless as the torpedoes the Navy fired at him smash into the crippled sub, destroying it. When the protagonists are fleeing from Godzilla, he moves ahead of them and takes out the bridge.
  • Shin Godzilla: During his engagement with the JSDF, Godzilla pauses before turning away from its original path. The JSDF commanders and politicians think it's a sign the defense is working. Cue Godzilla walking over to the bridge the JSDF HQ is by and then kicking said bridge on top of the HQ. It promptly resumes its journey to Tokyo's heart.
  • See below for MonsterVerse examples.
• Gremlins: A lot of the problems arise from the human characters fatally underestimating the Gremlins' intelligence. After the evil Mogwai are spawned, they trick Billy into feeding them after midnight by sabotaging his digital clock, and on several other occasions they damage equipment to cause accidents, like cutting the brakes of a police car. Stripe knows full well that water creates more Gremlins, so he jumps into a pool when Billy pursues him, and also knows how to operate tools (he attacks Billy with a pistol and a mini-chainsaw).
• Harbinger Down: The crew wonder if the monster is intelligent, and at that exact moment the power goes out. It's also bent the drive shaft, immobilizing their ship in the ice. The creature was originally a cosmonaut involved in an experiment Gone Horribly Wrong, so it's likely the creature has simply maintained it's intelligence.
• In the 2007 film remake of I Am Legend, Robert Neville ends up caught in a trap similar to the one he used, with his mannequin friend as bait, watching an infected man hold back a team of infected attack dogs until the sun sets...
  • The alternate ending also shows that It Can Feel. The creatures are only attacking to get back their friend.
• In the Tall Grass: When he first enters the grass maze, Travis tries to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find his way back by tying pieces of long grass into knots. As soon as he's out of sight, the grass undoes the knot.
• It Follows: Hugh warns Jay that "It" is "slow, but not dumb". While "It" seems to just mindlessly chase victims, in the climax, the heroes try to trick "It" into following Jay into a swimming pool so they can electrocute "It". "It" notices the trap and instead starts throwing things at them.
• Jaws. The shark hunters finally realize that the shark is hunting them.
• Jumanji. The ominous drumbeat that draws people to uncovering the board game heavily implies that it wants to be found. It's stated outright when the young Alan and Sarah first play.
  Young Alan: Uh, oh. The game thinks I rolled...
  Young Sarah: What do you mean "the game thinks"?
  • The monkeys are smart enough to learn how to drive a car and to fire guns.
• In Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, it even changes its form to a retro videogame console to better catch the attention of its next players. It does this explicitly after the young gamer rejects its board game form to play video games, showing that this isn't a natural evolution of Jumanji, it made a decision.
• Jurassic Park:
  • Muldoon in Jurassic Park (1993) demands that the Velociraptors be killed as they're far too intelligent; testing the electric fence for weaknesses (but never the same spot twice, "They remember," he warns) before they were moved to their high-walled prison. They seem to realise when the power is cut and claw their way through the electrified wire at the top. Even Muldoon underestimates their intelligence — as he's stalking one Velociraptor, another ambushes him from the side. His last words are a genuinely admiring, "Clever girl...."
  • "You sure the third one is contained?" "Unless it can open doors." Cue raptor learning how to open a door in the very next scene...
  • Done even more explicitly in Jurassic Park III, where it's implied the raptors' intelligence is improving. At one point, two characters are pinned behind a mesh door by a raptor. After trying in vain to get at them, it looks up at the gap between door and ceiling and begins climbing the door. There's another scene where the raptors leave one injured man alive and hide nearby, waiting for the other humans to come out of hiding to help him. That's not even mentioning the revelation that the raptors have their own language.
  They set a trap. They actually set a trap.
  • The Lost World: Jurassic Park: It's not so much that they are outwitted but rather that they were distracted. Like any animal, they have an instinct to investigate any strange noise they hear. That doesn't excuse them from not learning, which any intelligent animal would do from its mistakes.
  • Jurassic World continues the tradition: the I. rex demonstrates much more intelligence than anyone realized when it tricks the humans into opening a door so it can break out by clawing up the walls like it climbed them and cooling itself so the thermal cameras can't find it. Once it breaks out, it's able to not only remember a surgery that it had years ago, but somehow deduce that the surgery was to implant a tracking device into it (despite never having been tracked via the transmitter before), and clawed out the tracking device in order to use it as bait for an ambush. Owen's four imprinted raptors are also shown to be incredibly intelligent, such as following complex training routines on a daily basis, outwitting a team of heavily armed InGen mercenaries, and strategically Tag Teaming the I. rex to take her down. Rexy the T. rex recognizes Blue as an ally in her fight against the I. rex, and defeats it by shoving the I. rex toward the Mosasaurus' pool. Rexy immediately backs away to avoid being eaten herself.
  • Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: As a creature made with DNA from the I. rex, the Indoraptor inherited the smarts. When Wheatley shoots him with tranquilizer darts, he pretends to be knocked out to get Wheatley to come too close. He also figures out how to open a window, something his raptor siblings couldn't figure out in the previous film.
• Discussed in Komodo.
  Oates: I think these things are getting smarter.
  Denby: Either that, or we're getting dumber.
• Romero's Living Dead Series gradually hints that zombies were slowly gaining more intelligence or could even learn things:
  • Night of the Living Dead (1968): The very first zombie that appears in the film uses a brick to break the window of Barbra's car when she locks herself in. Then later on, when Karen is discovered by her mother, Karen is eating her father as she has become a zombie. Creepily, Zombie-Karen had enough intelligence to grab a spade and stab her horrified mother repeatedly before presumably eating her.
  • In Dawn of the Dead (1978), as Peter fights the zombies off to get in the helicopter with Francine, one of the zombies had the smarts to wrestle the weapon away from Peter (and did the same with Roger earlier in the film). After the two remaining survivors take off, the mall plays its closing time theme. Every zombie in the mall shambles toward the exits as if they remember the purpose of the theme.
  • Day of the Dead (1985): Captain Rhodes is seriously freaked out when the Mad Scientist demonstrates that zombies can remember certain behaviors, even how to use objects from their previous lives as humans. Such as a veteran-turned zombie recognizing the bars on his collar and remembering to salute an officer... or how to use an M1911 .45 pistol.
  • In Land of the Dead, the zombies' intelligence has reached an all-time high. The leader of the zombies, Big Daddy, learns how to use an automatic rifle (and teaches a female zombie how to use it), the zombie horde learns to ignore the "sky flowers" (fireworks) that the humans use to distract them, and one of the undead prove mentally competent enough to chop the hand off of a soldier who has just pulled the pin on his grenade. The ending is a remarkably hopeful example of this trope, since the zombies look at people who are still alive... and keep on shambling forward, taking no interest in attacking them. Apparently, they became smart enough to get over their bloodlust.
  • Unofficial spin-off The Return of the Living Dead runs with this as well. Turns out that zombies keep a lot of their brainpower; it's just overwhelmed by the constant agony of decomposition (that's why they eat the brains). Tar Man uses a chain winch to rip open a closet door when a victim hides behind it, demonstrating puzzle-solving abilities, and they're capable of enough speech to fake distress calls to lure additional victims (the famous "Send more paramedics" line).
• MonsterVerse:
  • This is especially played up with King Ghidorah in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and his reincarntaion, Mechagodzilla, in Godzilla vs. Kong. Ghidorah quickly establishes that he's genuinely evil and not only aware of humanity, but actively wants them dead. When Madison unplugs the ORCA from the speakers in Boston, he not only zeroes in on her in seconds, but Ichi's (Ghidorah's middle head) eyes narrowing as it looks through the window at her implies he's worked out he's being tricked by this tiny human - something reinforced by his preparing to obliterate her with all three of his gravity beams even after the ORCA is smashed.
  • Godzilla (2014): Godzilla gives the distinct impression of regarding the protagonist at one point when it eyeballs him close up. The MUTOs hint at it as well, such as when the female figures out that Brody is what killed her eggs.
    • Another notable moment is the female MUTO seems to actively wait for the train carrying the nuclear weapons and ambush them, making use of her natural camouflage. Also, it appears by the point of the San Francisco fight, the Mutos have learned to weaponize their EMP abilities (before primarily using the shockwave accompanying it to throw shoulders).
    • At the end of the fight with the male MUTO, Big G is clearly watching, waiting and planning. It doesn't turn to face the threat, as you'd expect an animal under attack to do, but keeps its back toward the approaching MUTO and thus lures into into position to slam it into a skyscraper with an unexpected tail attack. Similarly, it's clearly learned that the female MUTO is resistant to its atomic breath and so forces her mouth open to direct the blast straight down her throat.
  • Kong: Skull Island: Ramarak, as shown when it tail-whips Cole into a wall instead of eating him when he's clearly about to pull a Heroic Sacrifice. Also Kong, when he sees the ship propeller attached to the chain he's holding and figures that he can use it as a weapon.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019):
    • Mothra shows this by being the first Titan to flat out try to communicate with humans, alerting Monarch to the fact Godzilla's still alive and actively leading them to help him. The novelization seems to have her telepathically contact Madison and save her. This plays into the ambigiousity of whether she's just a huge prehistoric animal worshipped as a deity or a genuinely supernatural goddess.
    • In the novelization, a cephalopod-like Titan called the Kraken tricks Monarch into thinking it's died, then destroys the facility monitoring it with remarkable cunning and efficiency.
  • Godzilla vs. Kong: As is the norm, both titular monsters come across as far more intelligent than their appearances suggest with both showing adaptive and reasoning skills. The Monarch crew express incredulity when they witness Kong communicating with Jia using sign language.
  • See Comic Books folder for another example.
• Inverted in Nope. The Reveal of the true nature of "Jean Jacket", the UFO stalking and abducting the main characters, is kicked off by OJ realizing that its behavior only makes sense if it's not a spaceship flown by intelligent beings, but a simple-minded solitary predator. It isn't stupid, but it is a Space Whale that clearly doesn't have much of a strategy apart from eating safely. OJ and Emerald, who make their living as animal trainers, exploit this to lure, trap, and defeat Jean Jacket.
• In Pacific Rim, Kaijus get a few scenes demonstrating their intelligence. A list of what they have been shown to do: Use tools to their advantage, play dead, attack the heads of the Jaegers to specifically kill their pilots, use teamwork to take down multiple enemies and also try to kill an individual human that is a threat to their mission. Justified in that they turn out to be bioengineered weapons rather than merely rampaging beasts as previously thought, and the aliens who built them have been gradually improving the kaiju just as the humans have been improving the Jaegers.
• Comes up in varying degrees throughout the movie Phase IV. It's known from the beginning that the ants being studied by the scientists are inordinately intelligent, but as the film goes on they display a startling level of intellect and adaptability. At one point, the scientists spray poison onto a strip of land to kill a group of ants and create an impassible barrier between themselves and the insects. They wake up a day later to find that the ants had not only developed immunity to the poison and recouped their losses, but had constructed a series of reflective platforms designed to direct the desert sun onto the scientists' lab and overheat their machinery.
• Comes up in the Planet of the Apes reboot films:
  • In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the SWAT troopers have a brief Oh, Crap! moment when they realize that the apes are capable of using tactics like flanking and using cover. Good tactics.
    • This is an homage to a similiar scene in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, from the original series.
  • In Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the humans are horrified by the realization that the apes can talk, that they know how to use guns, and that they understand Gunboat Diplomacy.
  Dreyfus: They're just a bunch of apes!
  Malcolm: (regarding the huge army of apes standing outside the settlement gates) Do they look like "just a bunch of apes" to you?
• In Resident Evil: Extinction, to assuage worries of possibly never being able to go out into the open world ever again, Dr. Isaacs injects several zombies with a serum made from Alice's blood to enable them to think and remember. It sorta works; the zombies are now capable of using items such as cell phones and a camera, but also become more dangerous because not only did the serum not remove the zombie's cannibalistic instincts, but it also made them faster and angrier.
• The unfortunate campers in The Ruins realize the plant-like entity they're trapped with is mimicking their voices to lure them into a trap. It also mimics a cell phone ringtone further inside the ruin because it knows humans will go to that noise. When it learns of one girl's strong desire to cut herself (to get rid of vines she thinks are inside of her), it proceeds to repeat her own Madness Mantra back to her until she snaps.
• Believe it or not, this comes up in Shaun of the Dead. The zombies still retain shadows of their former personalities. Zombie Phillip turned off the music he hated (right after Shaun told his mother that the Phillip she loved was gone forever). Shaun keeps Zombie Ed chained up in the shed to play video games with. Zombie Pete somehow got all the way to the Winchester like Shaun told him to (except he wasn't feeling any better).
• In the film version of Starship Troopers, the humans just quickly assume that the Bugs are dumb, mindless animals ("I find the idea of a Bug that thinks offensive"). However, the humans learn their lesson once the Bugs spring a massive trap and repel the initial human invasion force. It's later revealed that they are being led by extremely intelligent "Brain Bugs", a leadership caste. Keep in mind the war began when the bugs hit Earth with an asteroid from the other side of the galaxy and hit a population center to boot (although this is heavily implied to be a lie for propaganda purposes).
• In The Thing from Another World the scientists find that their reanimated alien is a plant, not an animal. A reporter finds the idea of an "intellectual carrot" mind boggling but is told there are plants on Earth (like the Telegraph Vine and the Century Plant) that have a "kind of thinking". He's also told that intelligence in plants is older than "... the animal arrogance that ignores it." Of course, the chief scientist keeps saying the alien is wiser than us, confusing intelligence with wisdom.
• In The Thing (1982), a remake of the above, the American crew of Outpost 31 pretty much collectively shits their pants when they realize how smart the eponymous Thing is. Everything from destroying blood samples to leaving false evidence as who has been impersonated to picking off the smartest members of the camp who could come up with ways of identifying it, culminates in trying to shut off the power so it can freeze again for a rescue team to discover it, while at the same time killing its human enemies in the brutal Antarctic winter.
• This continues in The Thing (2011), the prequel of the above, with the Norwegan scientists. The thing quickly proves itself intelligent enough to not only clean up evidence of an attack, but to also lie about seeing a different person acting suspiciously and leaving the bathroom with cleaning supplies to not only deflect suspicion, but lull its potential victim into trusting it. It's also smart enough to not attack the others with it on the helicopter, knowing to wait until they get to their destination so it can spread, and only attacking when it realizes they're not leaving. In the end, one is even clever enough to try to slip around the "it can't replicate non-organic matter" test they've been using by making a point of wearing its victim's earring — the only thing it miscalculated on was its intended victim being observant enough to notice the earring was on the wrong side.
• Tremors movies:
  • In the original Tremors movie, the Graboids can not only think, but learn very quickly, to the dismay of the citizens of Perfection. Though they start out just grabbing at whatever's walking around, and smashing through things, later on they dig a trap, and the last one even figures out both the dynamite-on-a-string trick and the loud-noises-as-a-distraction trick. Val still manages to outsmart "Stumpy" with some very fast thinking.
  Val: This thing ain't smarter 'n us.
  • Zigzagged in Tremors 2: Aftershocks, where the Graboids metamorphose into the next stage of their life cycle, three-foot-tall raptor things called Shriekers. Earl, who's dealt with the Graboids before, keeps mentioning their learning abilities as explanation for why the power and communications are suddenly cut off, and their escape vehicle's engine is destroyed. Later on, however, it turns out they were just attacking whatever was displaying heat. As Grady puts it, "You mean they're acting so smart because they're so stupid?" Later though, the Shriekers show intelligence, forming a ladder out of themselves to get up onto the roof the heroes were hiding on.
  • In Tremors 3: Back to Perfection, El Blanco, an albino Graboid that can't transform into a Shrieker, has gotten smart enough to understand that Burt can't kill until it comes onto his property. Though, on the positive side the ending and the following series shows that because he's so smart but can also get full due to being sterile, it's ultimately possible to 'train' him in a sense so it's possible to co-exist with him.
  • During the climax of Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, one of the "dirt dragons" attacks and consumes the punt gun that Hiram just used to kill one of its brethren; an onlooking Juan then asks in stunned disbelief if it did that on purpose. Later, it (like Stumpy above) shows that it's learned to avoid noises being made in an attempt to distract it from attacking the trapped Fu Yen.
• In Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, the first generation Werewolves, unlike the second generation Lycans, are unable to return to human form. Most consider them mindless, feral beasts, but they begin to bide their time, set up ambushes, and even set up crude booby traps like digging pits in the road to trap carriages. After Lucian makes contact with them, he finds they are able to understand orders and work with the Lycans whether or not they are in human form.
• In the movie Wyvern, the title monster proves itself far more intelligent than a simple animal. It destroys cars and intentionally uses them to block the interstate to keep its prey from escaping. It opens its attack on the town proper by knocking out the town's power and communications and continues to destroy any it can find. And later in the movie it uses one seriously wounded but alive victim as bait to try and lure the others out. Justified, as it's implied it's actually the child of Hel from Norse mythology and thus less a dragon and more a divine entity shaped like one.

Literature

• Chrysalis (RinoZ): The appearance of even a single monstrous ant is cause for alarm at the best of times, since if not quickly exterminated, ants can multiply until they overrun kingdoms. But the fact that that ant was intelligent enough to run away from the alarms and the onrushing soldiers, instead of fighting them, is even more concerning for Commander Titus, and he quickly organises the Abyssal Legion to search for the nest so they can eradicate it. (The ant in question was actually the story's reincarnated protagonist — and the Legion is no less alarmed when he proceeds to uplift all the other ants to approximately human intelligence.)
• The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. The exact level of intelligence of the genetically-engineered Man-Eating Plants is a subject for debate, with the first-person protagonist (who worked on a Triffid farm) rubbishing the idea that Triffids are intelligent — after all, dissections haven't found anything remotely like a brain. Others are not so sure. One man points out that the Triffids escaped from their farms within hours of everyone going blind. In another scene, a Triffid is waiting outside the very door which a person would run out of if they heard someone driving down the road.
  • One of the protagonist's former friends (he's presumably blinded and then killed like most other people), who also happens to be a worker at the same Triffid farm knows that they're intelligent, and has been trying to decipher their language (rattling stick-like limbs against their hollow stems). He also notes that they always go for the eyes, having figured out that this is humanity's greatest strength, that is intelligence.
  • Later on, once the Cozy Catastrophe (which isn't as cozy as its detractors made out) is in full swing, it rapidly becomes obvious that Triffids are at least as intelligent as some animals: At the very least, they can learn to associate the sound of a generator with an electric fence being turned on and are seen to use some basic pack-hunting tactics.
• In Peter F. Hamilton's short story "Deathday" (found in the A Second Chance at Eden collection), there's a guy who had just buried his wife on an abandoned colony world. He starts having dreams of her turning into a local shapeshifting critter called a "slitherskin", which scientists had speculated was also mildly psychic as a defense mechanism. Scandalized by this invasion of his mind, the guy goes on a crusade to kill the animal snooping around his house, even remarking at the end that "like every cornered animal, it charged". He later goes back to deposit his rifle at his wife's grave. The next day, he finds that the creature had laid eggs (also a bit psychic) disguised as rocks at the gravesite. The last thing he sees is one of the slitherskin hatchlings taking the rifle, and pulling the trigger.
• The Great Zoo of China: The dragons are FAR smarter than their Chinese zookeepers realise, even having a complex language to communicate with.
• At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft. The expedition to Antarctica uncovers some fossils of what they assume are prehistoric plants and begins dissecting them. The narrator later discovers the camp wrecked, and the dogs and scientists all killed except for one missing man, who they assume went insane. It's only when they find his dissected body that they realize the horrible truth — the so-called fossils are actually sentient aliens capable of hibernating for millennia, and once had a civilization superior to man's.
• In The Return of the King, there were the Two Watchers, gargoyles who guarded the entrance to the Tower of Cirith Ungol. While they seemed to be immobile statues, they also seemed at least partially sentient, and could keep trespassers out with an invisible barrier created through force of will alone. Samwise (who felt an evil presence in them, like "some web like Shelob's, only invisible") got into the Tower the first time using the Phial of Galadriel, but the two Watchers were expecting him when he came back after rescuing Frodo, requiring both of them to use the Phial with the power of Elvish words to escape.
• Variation in the Sword of Truth books. We're told early on that short tailed gars are more intelligent than the long tailed variety, and Zedd even has a brief conversation with one (consisting of threatening it, asking its name, and sending it to kill their pursuers), but even then they're mostly treated like animals. In later books, however, it turns out they're quite intelligent, and a whole herd of the buggers pulls a Heel–Face Turn (or at least agrees to stop eating humans). It took them how long to realize the ''talking'' monsters were smart?
• No Gods for Drowning: Glories are monsters that prey on humanity, but it's revealed that they can't communicate with people per se that they're much smarter than what you would think. Glories are intelligent and like to prey on sapient prey, as it's more fun to them than killing non-intelligent animals. They mimic the voices of their victims to lure them in and then mentally destroy them to increase their suffering for sheer fun.

• In Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris-stories many characters express scepticism about the sentience or abilities of the Graycaps, but it's quite clear to the reader that they are quite possibly superhumanly intelligent and extremely dangerous when they want to be. The dual narrators of Shriek: An Afterword make a pretty good case of this being pure denial that the sceptics pursue to protect their own peace of mind.
• Inverted in The War Against the Chtorr, where all the evidence of the Alien Invasion is that there must be some intelligence behind it, yet there's no sign of spaceships or any other means of crossing interstellar distances. The Chtorran gastropedes are assumed to be behind things, yet their intelligence is that of the idiot savant — they're very good at opening locks and can somehow communicate over distances, yet little else. The series appears to be implying that the entire Chtorran ecology is some form of Hive Mind.
• The Museum Beast/Mbwun from the novel and movie The Relic is able to recognize traps, hide bodies, and do what it can to stay out of sight from humans. Justified by the fact that it used to be human itself.
• When the heroes in Codex Alera first come up against the Vord after Tavi awakened them, it seems like it's going to be a case of "send in the army to exterminate the nest of mindless monsters". Unfortunately for them, it turns out that the Vord aren't just intelligent, but brilliant. Heck, the Queen set up all the circumstances for the Alerans' attack herself. And so a Malignant Plot Tumor was born...
  • In fact, the only reason the Aleran villagers survived the second book was because the Queen didn't expect self-sacrifice from humans. She was observing their tactics, recruiting their best fighters, upgrading her troops by researching their magic, etc. She was stunned at a bad moment upon realizing that their smartest tactician was Ax-Crazy (in her eyes).
• At first the Dark Ones who are attacking the realm of Darwath are considered to be simple monsters, no more intelligent than predatory animals. Then they make and execute a complex plan to kill the infant Prince Altir and his mother in a way that looks like an accident. About the same time, Ingold and Gil discover that long ago, the Dark lived on the surface and even built cities. Late in the second book, Ingold and Rudy discover that the Dark Ones have a Hive Mind, and any human wizard who shapechanges into a Dark One loses his or her individuality and becomes part of the mass-mind forever.
• In The Gnome's Engine, the townsfolk of Hob's Church have been trying to wipe out the local burrowing hobgoblins, considering them unintelligent, destructive pests. When a device under construction is sabotaged, one resident speculates that the hobgoblins did it, thinking it to be another hobgoblin-killing booby trap. One of the heroines calls him out on this ("They thought it was?"), and the accuser is horrified to realize that he, himself, isn't as convinced that hobgoblins are dumb animals as he'd believed. In fact, the hobgoblins are intelligent, but it's a human who sabotaged the device.
• Subverted in World War Z, where the mercenary at the Long Island celebrities' fortress hears that their attackers can move quickly, and is frightened by the possibility that the zombies might think, too. It's a subversion because the attackers aren't zombies at all, but desperate civilians who'd seen the fortress's TV broadcasts, and are determined to seize this refuge for their families.
• Non-monster variant: In Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, we see this trope take effect upon Nicodemus in the laboratory as his intellect improves. Later, the sapient rats go to considerable lengths to avert this trope from their human pursuers' perspective, destroying all evidence of their more civilized lifestyle and even leaving a suicide-squad of naked fighters behind, at least some of whom are gassed to death, all to "prove" they're just ordinary rats.
• In the Myth Adventures novels, the main character's pet dragon Gleep seems from his perspective to be roughly on the same intellectual level as a puppy. Later novels show things from the dragon's perspective, and reveal both that it is quite intelligent and that it considers the main character to be its pet.
• Subverted in Stephen Baxter's Evolution, in the first flashback. There's mention of a dinosaur that's smarter than the others, but all this means is that it's "smart enough to go insane" - it submerges its survival instincts in order to hold a grudge against one of humanity's ancestors for eating its eggs.
• In Brains: A Zombie Memoir, some of the human antagonists react this way to the protagonists, who are among the few zombies capable of intelligent thought.
• Non-monster example: the ending of Jingo suggests that the Curious Squid are somewhat civilized and either built for themselves or adapted to living in the buildings on Leshp. They can't figure out why their city disappears above the sea every once in a while, though.
• In Phantoms, there's a very nasty Oh, Crap! moment when the characters figure out the Eldritch Abomination has human-level intelligence and awareness, and is terrorizing them For the Evulz.
• In The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul, Dirk Gently has a crazed eagle trapped in his house, and is squinting through the keyhole trying to see where it is. He gets a nasty shock when he realises it's on the other side of the door, looking back through the keyhole at him. This is because it's actually a jet fighter transformed into an eagle with the mind of the pilot, for getting in Thor's way.
• Three-quarters through Blindsight, the crew of the Theseus suddenly make the startling discovery that the "scramblers" they have been fighting, capturing, torturing and experimenting on are intelligent beings: They're intelligent without being sentient, a concept that was entirely alien to the crew up to that point and makes the "scramblers" so alien that trying to communicate with them meaningfully is impossible. At this point they also realise their "captives" let themselves get captured intentionally and have been spying on them. Things rapidly take a turn for the worse.
• Basically the entire plot of the book Warm Bodies, where an encounter with a human survivor causes a zombie to not only start coming back to life, but also to fall in love with her.
• Nemesis Saga
  • Nemesis' human DNA gives her a conscience that constantly clashes with her Kaiju side's urge to kill. She can focus her vengeance on specific targets and responds to her human name, Maigo.
  • Typhon not only looks mostly human, he thinks like one too.
• The Terror. After the monster first attacks a scouting party, the Franklin Expedition sets up a camouflaged hunting blind to ambush what they assume is a large and aggressive species of polar bear. Instead the monster sneaks up on them via a hole they'd cut in the ice for a Burial at Sea, attacks the blind from the side and kills the expedition commander.
• Death of Integrity goes to great length to establish that Genestealers aren't just a random packs of feral beasts. They can study, ambush, use adaptive tactics, find practical uses for their own corpses, identify and destroy your communication lines...
• Prey by Michael Crichton features a swarm of nanites that has artificial intelligence and algorithms programmed into its features so effectively that these things eventually enable it to think. It learns how to hunt like a predator, kill to eat, and even reproduce way out in the desert where it escaped to, close to the facility it was created in. The scientists who created it eventually decide science went too far and know they need to destroy the nanites, but not before it learns to mimic its prey in form and features. Eventually, the scientists struggling to survive learn that the swarm was intentionally released so that it may learn to do all this and more.
• In Worm the Endbringers are treated as monsters or natural disasters. Underestimating their intelligence based on this is a mistake. Armsmaster learned this the hard way, thinking he could perfectly predict Leviathan in a combat situation only for it to play along before using a previously unseen move.
• Twig: Rev. Mauer realizes this when talking in front of a Primordial lifeform (life capable of learning and altering its own body however it wants). He'd instructed his people growing the Primordial to stop it from developing intelligence, but he soon realizes by its reactions to overhearing his orders that they've failed.
  Mauer: Do you know? When I said that, you relaxed your muscles at your shoulder, your mouth sagged, and your wings dropped. You subconsciously prepared yourself to wait... and you just tensed. That took you about twenty seconds. You damn well understand me, don't you? And not just my tone of voice.
• The "Phoners" in Stephen King's Cell start out as mindless and vicious zombies, attacking each other and unaffected people alike, but gradually begin to form flocks, then a Hive Mind, and eventually a collective with an elaborate plan to turn all the unaffected humans into Phoners.
• In The Expanse novels the Protomolecule pulls this surprise and then more, not only can it think, but it can move an asteroid out of the way of an oncoming starship, and communicate across the solar system. Most notably the "failsafe" bombs in the Protomolecule-super soldiers of Caliban's War only work the first time, later ones rip them out before they detonate.
• Animorphs: During the David trilogy, the team are investigating a problem at sea near some boats when a killer whale moves in on them. They move closer to the boats, thinking the noise of the propellers will drive it off, before it reveals itself to be David in morph. Fortunately, Cassie gets away and morphs a humpback whale before looming up behind him (because he doesn't know enough about whales to know she wouldn't be able to eat him, he backs off).
• In the Fighting Fantasy gamebook Creature of Havoc, the protagonist is a hulking, scaly, spiny, clawed, man-eating monster. When it wanders into the town of Coven, people take one look and run for cover. It can then go shopping, to the utter bewilderment of the storekeeper who accepts its coin.
• Said sarcastically by Sherlock Holmes when he first meets Mary Russell, who literally trips over him in a field and works out very quickly that he is trying to track bees to find a new hive. She understandably takes offense and quickly becomes his apprentice.
• In the Tuf Voyaging story "Guardians" it's not the monsters emerging from Namor's oceans to attack the colonists that are intelligent, but rather a small mollusc that the colonists thought was nothing but good with butter, with no idea of their psionic abilities.
• Temeraire is set in an Alternate History where sapient dragons exist across the globe. Britain's are either paired with Dragon Riders in the Aerial Corps or kept in isolated breeding grounds, so few Britons know that they're intelligent, and many are quite surprised when a dragon starts talking to them — or, in Temeraire's case, quizzing them on their mathematical and literary knowledge.
  • The same setting features bunyips as burrowing dragon-like ambush predators. After Temeraire and Iskierka wreck a few burrows for the bunyips picking off some of their human crew, the bunyips retaliate with frightening intelligence: first by diverting water underground to trap a sleeping Temeraire in quicksand and attacking his crew while they’re occupied with pulling him out, and then by draining billabongs across their projected flight path, in the process demonstrating that bunyip colonies can plan and communicate with each other over long distances. To avoid dying of thirst, Temeraire is forced to placate the bunyips by hunting food for them.
• In Solar Defenders: The Role of a Shield, after a Monster of the Week displays signs of intelligence, Jenny expresses remorse afterwards for killing it. Kawena counters that if it was sentient, then the damage it caused was a result of choosing to cause harm rather than simply acting on instinct.
• In Space Glass, Nicora is thrown off guard by the realization that the Marauder can speak.
• Children of Time: Inverted by the partially-uplifted ants. Despite developing sophisticated behaviors such as glassmaking and metallurgy, they don’t think. Each individual ant is just a bundle of dumb reflexes, and the intelligence they display as a collective superorganism is pure computation, using trial and error to discover more efficient means of expanding the colony and then improving on those means without consciously understanding why or how they work.
• In The Finders Stone Trilogy, the ancient god Moander seems like a mindless, man-eating Muck Monster when he first appears. But when he speaks to Alias through a possessed Akabar, it becomes clear that the god is both intelligent and evil. He tells Alias how he plans to visit the abandoned capital of his ancient enemies and dance on the rubble, and tries to break her spirit by revealing the terrible truth about her origins as an Artificial Human.

Live-Action TV

• The Andromeda Strain: The eponymous Andromeda strain is a contagion that has at least some form of rudimentary intelligence as it can manipulate its carriers to get into locations that will spread the virus much faster, such as having infected birds suicide into a river it can spread itself further via the water.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Waters of Mars": When various crewmembers of Bowie Base One become infected by waterborne parasites that turn them into liquid-spewing bloated zombies, the hive mind-controlling them proves to not be stupid. They even manage to short out the systems of an airlock to bust it open.
  • "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone": In their first appearance, the Weeping Angels were merely predators who sneak up on you when you're not looking and displace you in time. Here, they work together to break necks, lay traps and steal voices as bait. And that's just the beginning...
  • "Oxygen": The personnel of mining station Chasm Forge wear "smartsuits", spacesuits with a basic problem-solving AI. When the suits turn against the crew, the AI turns out to be quite up to the task of solving the problems presented by jury-rigged locked doors and missing maps.
  • The Dregs in "Orphan 55" initially appear to be animalistic predators, but when the Doctor manages to trap one of them in a Mexican Standoff, it's smart enough to figure out the nature of the stand-off, and recognise that temporarily co-operating with the Doctor gives it the best chance of survival.
  • "Praxeus": Suki warns that Praxeus is capable of sensing efforts to cure it, and she's proven right when the infected crows attack the lab moments later.
• Dollhouse: This is Topher's non-verbal reaction to Echo when she (in her blank, wiped state) outright requests that he give her a "treatment" so she can help him better.
• Firefly: The Reavers might be utterly insane and indiscriminately violent, but that doesn't mean that the're stupid. What little is seen of their methods hints at them having excellent hunting skills, with them typically relying on stealth, patience, and subtlety. Furthermore, when they aren't relying on traps or surprise, they can use high-tech (and non-lethal) methods for disabling and capturing fleeing ships. And in the end, they can always fall back to strength in numbers.
• Game of Thrones:
  • If his reaction to Jaime calling him an idiot even before is any indication, there is still a somewhat of sentience in Gregor Clegane after Qyburn turns him into an Undead Abomination. He can also be seen smiling when he is about to torture/rape Unella. And ultimately, he stops obeying Cersei's orders — killing Qyburn when he tries to put him back in line — when given an opportunity to finally face off with his brother.
  • Tyrion suggests that the dragons are more intelligent than simple beasts, and goes down to talk to them. It's not clear if they understand what Tyrion says but they don't hurt him, and Rhaegal calmly offers his neck to Tyrion after he removes Viserion's collar. They also don't hurt Missandei, as she's a friend of their mother. Drogon also proves Tyrion right. After witnessing his brother Viserion being shot down by the Night's King via a well-aimed ice spear, when Drogon takes off and the Night's King throws a spear at him, Drogon quickly jerks to the left to avoid being hit and the lance sails harmlessly past his shoulder. Note, he did this after the Night's King already threw the spear at him, showing Drogon was intelligent enough to guess where the projectile would go and moving quickly enough to avoid it.
• In the Star Trek episode "The Devil in the Dark", Spock deduces that not only is the monster intelligent, it has a valid reason for killing the miners. It turns out that the "crystals" the miners are collecting are actually the monster's eggs. Fortunately, the creature, called a Horta, is able to bargain with the humans to arrive at a mutually agreeable compromise.
• Star Trek: Voyager ("Bliss"). Voyager encounters a huge space-dwelling alien that can create illusions in the minds of starship crews so they fly right into its maw.
  Emh: Judging by these bio-scans the organism's been devouring life forms for a bit longer than thirty-nine years. I'd estimate it's at least 200,000 years old.
  Qatai: The intelligent always survive.
  Emh: I wouldn't go that far. It appears to operate on highly-evolved instinct. I haven't detected any signs of sentience.
  Qatai: Oh, he's intelligent, all right. Smart enough to fool your crew into taking you offline.
• Supernatural: In the episode “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid”, Dean and Bobby, having locked themselves in a room, learn that the zombies pursuing them have not lost all of their mental faculties as one might assume.
  [Zombies pound at the door]
  Dean: (confident) It’s all right. They’re idiots. They can’t pick a lock.
  [The pounding immediately stops and the zombies are heard fiddling with the lock]
  Bobby: Don’t you ever get tired of being wrong?
  Dean: I’m making this stuff up as I go. Sue me!
  [The door bursts open]
• The Walking Dead Television Universe:
  • The Walking Dead (2010):
    • Although most walkers are pretty much your average run-of-the-mill zombie when it comes to intelligence, several walkers stand out when it comes to this. Morgan Jones' wife, who tries to open a door by twisting the doorknob and even gazes into the peephole, certain members of the walker horde can manage to climb ladders and one particular walker that showed tool use, namely grabbing a big rock and using it to smash in the windows holding them back from potential prey.
    • Milton tries an experiment with an elderly cancer patient to test whether this trope comes into effect, but when said elderly patient simply attacks him upon reanimation instead, he calls it off.
    • The protagonists think that this trope is going into effect in Season 9 when they encounter walkers that appear able to talk and use knives, leading to a discussion about whether the virus that created them could have evolved to this point. However, it's subverted when it turns out that they've actually just met the Whisperers, living humans who wear skin masks and act like walkers to blend in with them.
    • The walkers shown in early Season 1 episodes to have rudimentary human intellect (such as Morgan's wife or the one who used a rock) were initially written off as Early-Installment Weirdness, with the show writers admitting that they were making up the rules as they went at the time. However, they were re-canonized when a group of the protagonists encountered a small horde of walkers capable of climbing over walls and opening doors in the Season 11 episode "Variant", the episode title making it clear that these are another variant breed like the below World Beyond example (which chronologically aired first). These intelligent walkers later prove just how dangerous they are in "Family", when several scale the Commonwealth's walls and open the gates for the rest of the horde to swarm in.
  • The Walking Dead: World Beyond: In The Stinger for the final episode, we're introduced to a "variant" zombie quite different from the walkers. And while the most obvious differences are that these reanimate much quicker, are capable of running and appear to be much stronger, it's also evident that they're at least somewhat intelligent — the woman that we see become one was watching a video beforehand, which is still playing in the background only to be ignored by the new zombie, who instead turns around and rushes off in the direction of the person who just shot her.

Tabletop Games

• All Flesh Must Be Eaten: The vast majority of zombies are mindless; the default Intelligence is "Dumb as Dead Wood", a -2 on a scale of 1 to 6. But the Zombie Master is given a full palette of intelligence options, from Tool Use (at 1, they can break windows with rocks; at 3, they can drive cars) to Long-Term Memory (they know you went behind that wall, and they know you have to come out sometime) to Problem-Solving (sure, you locked the door, but they can figure out how to move boxes and get into the window). A clever Zombie Master can shock the players with just how much the zombies can learn.
• Dungeons & Dragons: Oozes are typically mindless creatures that work purely through ingrained stimulus and response. Mustard jellies stand out for having human-level intelligence, enough to recognize the value of treasure as bait to lure in more victims. They are thought to have come about when a young wizard attempted to polymorph herself into an ochre jelly.
• GURPS: This is quoted in GURPS: Magic 4th Edition, where it's played for horror. The funny thing is that it's mentioned again in Chapter 17 (Meta-Spells) on page 121, where the actual enchantments are explained as well as how they work, and again in Chapter 24 (Technological spells), where the reaction in Chapter 14 is played for laughs.
  Chapter 14: "This abomination thinks, somehow. It perceives, it decides, and it acts. Yet it does not live..."
  Chapter 24: "My cell phone does that." "Well, yeah, but this doesn't have any mana chips in it or anything. It's all spells and analog enchantments." "Oh. So?" "I dunno. I guess that used to be a big deal..."
• Promethean: The Created has Pandorans, mindless miscarriages of the process of creating a new Promethean who hunger endlessly for the vitriol of Prometheans. However, in rare occasions, a number of Pandorans can pull themselves together and form a Sublimatus, a fully-intelligent, nearly-human monstrosity that uses its new wits and cunning in an attempt to feast on Prometheans.
• Rocket Age: Many creatures are scarily intelligent, often to the surprise and despair of the Earthlings that first encountered them. The trip line spider of Venus sets up complicated booby traps, the Yetis of Callisto are intelligent, able to slip out of captivity and evade pursuit in the mountains of Germany and then there are creatures that may well be sentient.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Back before the Horus Heresy, the few times the Emperor acknowledged that there were entities in the Warp, he denied this trope. Unfortunately for everyone, he was lying, and the Chaos Gods were not just intelligent, but actively scheming to ruin the galaxy.
  • Most followers of Khorne are Axe-Crazy berserkers, but many of his top champions, such as Kharn the Betrayer, are full-on Genius Bruisers... and still Axe-Crazy berserkers.
  • The is frequently cited as the greatest danger of fighting the Orks. While the average Ork Boy is a Dumb Muscle Blood Knight, they possess a bestial cunning that can surprise an overconfident foe. The Warboss who leads a warband is the largest Ork in it, but is oftentimes also the smartest Ork in it, especially those from the Blood Axes clan, who appreciate turning an enemy's tactics against them.
    • The overwhelming majority of Orks are so impetuous, rowdy and unsophisticated that some Imperial commanders flat-out refuse to believe that Ork "Kommandos" exist, but there are indeed Orks who revel in slithering through the underbrush to slit sentries' throats and perform acts of sabotage to support their warband. And then there's Boss Snikrot of the Red Skull Kommandos, an utter genius at guerilla warfare even by human standards.
    • This gets topped by the Beast's Orks in The Beast Arises, who possess Eldar-tier technology, professionally-manufactured weaponry, and a solid grasp of strategy and tactics at all levels of military operation as well as formal military organisation. One of the Orks gives a Wham Line when he offers terms of surrender in fluent Gothic: "Don't need an interpreter. We tell you how to surrender, you surrender. Easy."
  • This pops up a lot when the Tyranids are involved. Individually, Tyranids are hyper-evolved killing animals, but the Hive Mind directing them has proven to be frighteningly intelligent, staging ambushes and feigning attacks to probe enemy defences. The Hive Mind has fooled Imperial Guard generals, Space Marine captains, Chaos warlords, even Eldar farseers have been confounded by its tactical prowess.
    • The Swarmlord is the most advanced, most intelligent Hive Tyrant to ever exist. Its tactical and strategic genius is such that, during the Tyranid's assault on the Ultramarines homeworld, the monster consistently outfoxed the Ultramarines, who are known to be the best Space Marines in terms of adaptability, tactics, and strategy. The Swarmlord is functionally immortal, for each time its body dies, its mind is reabsorbed into the Hive Mind so it can be respawned into a new body wherever it is needed anywhere in the galaxy. In this way, it has accumulated eons of combat experience, quite possibly making it the most experienced military leader in the galaxy.
    • Deathleaper is a particularly cunning Lictor that, during the Tyranid invasion of St. Caspalen, realized that simply killing the Imperials' leader would galvanize morale. Instead, Deathleaper repeatedly stalked and attacked Cardinal Salem's bodyguard, killing everyone around him and soaking him in their blood, but never laid a talon on the Cardinal. After a few rounds of this, Cardinal Salem went quite insane, and with his suicide the defense of the planet all but collapsed.
  • Officially, Razorwings are animals. However, they often display worryingly intelligent behavior, such as complex coordination and tactics during hunts, usually paired with what are clearly verbal and visual signals, and a tendency to elaborately parade the fruits of their kills to each other. One incident in the Liber Xenologis suggests that they may be smart enough to deliberately play human factions against each other for their own benefit.
• In Warhammer, trolls are just barely tool-using and capable of speech to some degree, but mostly considered little more than humanoid beasts. Many troll slayers who sought out the infamous chaos troll Throgg have failed to realize in time that amongst his obvious mutations is a subtle one and he's not just hideously strong and tough but probably smarter than they are.

Theatre

• The witch in Into the Woods acknowledges this trope upon realizing a giant has entered the kingdom.
  "With a giant, we'll all have to battle. A giant's the worst. A giant has a brain. Hard to outwit a giant."

Video Games

• The UAVs that Erusea deploys against Osea in Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown avert this trope, but Hugin and Munin play this straight. When they go online, they fly towards the Lighthouse to use its radio transmission capabilities to upload their data to automated drone factories to start a Robot War. When they’re shot down and fly in their base forms, one of them proceeds to record and analyze Trigger to further improve themselves, while the other one flies into the underground tunnel towards the lighthouse, hacks into the tunnel’s shutters to slow down Trigger and Count when they chase after them, and even stages an ambush near the end of the tunnel.
• As in the movies that inspired it, Alien: Isolation shows the xenomorph to be very adaptive, as it learns your patterns, and even uses your own behaviour against you to lure you into traps. Excessively use noisemakers? It'll start ignoring them, and start trying to pinpoint where the noisemaker was thrown from. Like the flamethrower? It will hang around just outside of the flamethrower's effective range, waiting for you to turn your back or lower your guard for a split second to make that Deadly Lunge. Use lockers to hide? It will start searching them more thoroughly, and then it will adopt a tactic of pretending to leave the room and then dropping back in when you emerge. Overuse molotovs and pipebombs? It will avoid trying to catch you in open areas and try to get you in tight corridors and vents instead, where the splash damage prevents you from using them. Most terrifyingly of all though, it develops a personal vendetta against the player character: if it catches her in a wide area or a corridor, it will run after you (and probably kill you as it is a Lightning Bruiser); if it corners her in a room or other place with no visible means of escape, it will opt for the Ominous Walk, as if to say "Uh oh, looks like you've got nowhere to go this time, you poor thing."
  • In Aliens vs. Predator 2, when playing as the alien you overhear a human commander explaining their plan to defeat the aliens, who he says are just stupid animals. Your next task is to relay this plan to the Queen, who promptly develops a successful counterattack.
• The titular Ao Oni initially seems like a mindless cannibalistic predator, but quickly proves itself capable of thinking and planning. It's able to lay traps, cut you off by locking exit doors and destroying an escape ladder to trap you in the house, and your friends who have been turned into onis themselves are wholly capable of masquerading as humans, speech and all, to trick you.
• A few creatures in ARK: Survival Evolved:
  • Troodon selectively prefer to attack humans and tamed creatures over wild ones. Helena posits that they are Hunting the Most Dangerous Game, are not so much tamed as allied with by letting them battle and kill your creatures, and describes them as being capable of communicating their experiences to each other where most animals have to learn on their own.
  • The giant mantids in Scorched Earth are capable of tool use (they have opposable claws on their forearms), complex language, and sophisticated ambush tactics. Dahkeya's notes describe an incident where they broke a water pipe into the village purely so they could attack the humans that came out to fix it.
  • The Noglins in Genesis Part 2 are parasites that can control any creature to which they are attached. This includes humans, so they are by necessity intelligent enough to operate anything a human can operate, from spears to Humongous Mecha. This is intentional; Rockwell made the Noglins to enslave the Genesis ship's human personnel and serve him. Like Troodon, wild Noglins are tamed by allowing them to attack (in this case, possess) your creatures until they decide you're worth obeying.
• Bendy and the Ink Machine:
  • Although it's been revealed that the Projectionist used to be Norman Polk, he seemed to be one of the many mindless monsters in Joey Drew Studios. He never spoke to Henry, only screeching instead when he saw him. Prior to Chapter 4, he also had No Object Permanence, which allowed Henry to get away easily by hiding in a Little Miracle Station. However, at one point in Chapter 4, he chases Henry up the stairs. There, the door has been sealed shut ahead of Henry, and when Henry tries to hide, he keeps looking at the Little Miracle Station where Henry is, even coming closer. Luckily, Bendy shows up.
  • Although Bendy falls for Henry hiding in the Little Miracle Stations too, there are some points in the game where it's clear that he's got some level of intelligence. Perhaps the most obvious example is in Chapter 5 - he hid the one thing that could harm him, a reel labeled "The End," in the one place all the studio's other inhabitants are too scared to go: his lair.
• Grace Holloway in BioShock 2 has this realization about Subject Delta, the Big Daddy that you play as, should you choose to spare her.
  Grace: You had me under a gun... and yet you just walk away? No monster alive turns the other cheek... No monster does that. A thinking man does that.
• Bloodborne: Most of the bosses you face are humans who lost themselves to the Beast Scourge and are now feral. And then there's the first boss of the DLC, Ludwig the Accursed. He starts out as feral as any other beast, but halfway through the fight, he'll see the light of his Moonlight Greatsword and his human mind will return, changing his title to Ludwig, The Holy Blade and giving him a new moveset where he wields the blade as a Master Swordsman.
• Capella's Promise has the Mother, who was originally thought to be a monster creating weapon before being revealed as having intelligence. This might be a subversion due to the fact that Zanara fused with her, meaning he might be the reason that she gained intelligence.
• Creature Shock have you battling the main Geomorph, who looks like a savage, mindless insectoid alien monster, albeit one clad in armor. But after you put it down, the Geomorph revives itself and comes at you piloting a Jet Pack and blasting away with a BFS.
• As per the Warhammer 40000 example, while playing the Dawn of War II: Retribution Tyranid campaign you can hear Imperial Guardsmen realizing "They're using cover! They're supposed to be just animals!" In their defense, their training manuals do insist that Tyranids are simple-minded beasts.
• The Hillbilly in Dead by Daylight seems like any other mindless Hillbilly Horrors stereotype, but the fact that his default perk is Tinkerer implies that there is more to him than just brute strength.
  The Hillbilly makes impressive tools out of scraps. Tools aimed at maiming us in creative ways... It's horrifying to think it's actually intelligent.
• Dead Rising 4: Doctor Barnaby invented a hybridization machine that would prevent the recently infected from going insane, effectively making them sentient zombies. Unfortunately, the guy who tests this is driven insane from existing injuries interfering with the process, and he acts as the final boss railing against humanity.
• Devil May Cry 5 has an example of this being Played for Laughs. Doppelgangers in the series are demons that take the form of another being and can be used by powerful enough demons to fight alongside them, though just how sentient they are remains in question. However, Vergil's doppelganger apparently has a strong enough sense of self to break away from Vergil's control and, much to his horror, start dancing. While it's debatable if this is a creature with its own thoughts, a manifestation of Vergil's subconsious, or an example of V living on after being reformed into Vergil, the doppelganger clearly knows what its doing when it beckons for the embarassed Vergil to join in and continues to humiliate its master until cut down.
• Zombiemen of various types in Doom. In the first few games, they aren't much of an example; just intelligent enough to walk around and fire their guns. In Doom³ and DOOM (2016), they receive a massive step up.
  • In Doom³, compared to the slow, mindless shambling civilian zombies that can at best wield a flashlight or pipe wrench as a bludgeon, Z-Sec zombies can tactically sprint around, communicating through radio and firing standard firearms. Commando zombies are similarly intelligent, with chaingunners providing cover fire for their tentacled brethren.
  • In DOOM (2016), the Possessed Soldiers are tactically cognizant and will make great use of their arm-mounted plasma guns; the Security will even tactically utilize their giant energy riot shields, firing in defilade and dropping the shield at range to adopt a more accurate firing stance. The regular Possessed, on the other hand, are just mindless zombies that shamble at you in a slow gait.
  • Brutal Doom amplifies the zombiemen's intelligence considerably. They fire their assault rifles in bursts instead of one shot at a time, can coordinate to hunt the player down, and can even operate tanks, helicopters, and mechas.
• Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening shows this trope early on with a talking darkspawn. It turns out that these all originate from one darkspawn, called the Architect, who was born free-willed and sapient and found a way to make other darkspawn free-willed and sapient just as he is.
  • The game proper also demonstrates this with regular darkspawn, which, while still mentally bound and completely loyal the Archdemons, still exhibit independent personality, such as making threatening gestures, giving battle cries, and even laughing evilly during fights. Overall, their behavior is fairly reminiscent of the relationship between Sauron and the Orcs.
  • The Mabari war-hounds. They were bred by a mage to be smart and understand what they are told, and additionally to remember, understand, and carry out complex orders. In Dragon Age II, Hawke's Mabari is smart enough to play cards (he'd do better if he'd stop wagging his tail whenever he gets a good hand)!
• Elden Ring: While most non-animal enemies attack you because they've gone mad after the Shattering, enemy behavior and item descriptions imply or explicitly point out exceptions.
  • When the scholars of Raya Lucaria haven't aggroed, they stand around reading books, implying that that's what they'd rather be doing and they're only attacking you because they consider you an invader of the academy.
  • Pages are exceptionally dangerous enemies because unlike most of the actual warriors (such as the Lordsworn Soldiers), they retain their wits and use tactics against you.
  • Perfumers in Leyndell can be seen tending to the wounded and talking to Pages when they're not attacking you.
  • Trolls are often treated as beasts of burden in the Lands Between, but they have human-level intelligence and can integrate with human society if given a chance. House Caria of Liurnia even has troll knights, and one of Ranni's servants is a troll blacksmith named Iji who spends most of his time reading.
  • Dragons' lore paints them as just as smart as humans; Adula was knighted by Ranni and Ezykes remained focused on killing practitioners of Dragon Communion even as the Scarlet Rot got to him. The Ancient Dragons were their own faction who fought Marika before the Shattering, and eventually became objects of worship as part of the Dragon Cult. All of them use their own lightning incantations, Fortissax struck up a lifelong friendship with the demigod Godwyn, and Lanseax fell in love with the human knight Vyke.
  • The Kindred of Rot attack you on sight because spreading Scarlet Rot is literally what they're born to do, and they can't communicate with humans anyway, but the description of the Pest Glaives they wield note that they possess a keen, if inhuman, intellect.
  • The Beastmen of Farum Azula seem savage and wield crude-looking weapons, but the item descriptions note that they quite possibly know more than humans, their weapons are well-made, and they have unique cultural practices like crafting pots specifically to use the broken shards as shields.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • In his "opus", series' recurring character St. Jiub the Eradicator recounts his quest to eradicate the much reviled Cliff Racers from Vvardenfell. As he was hunting a lone Cliff Racer, it led him into a trap where hundreds of Cliff Racers suddenly descended upon him. Two days of fighting and hundreds of dead Cliff Racers later, Jiub finally collapsed, exhausted and wounded. He would have died if not for the timely rescue of the Dunmeri Physical God Vivec, who was so impressed with Jiub's actions that Vivec declared him to be a saint.
  • In Skyrim, though they give the impression of mindless Morlock-like monsters, the Falmer clearly have some semblance of intelligence. They corral and breed chaurus, craft weapons and armor, brew crude poisons from fungi, and in Dawnguard they've built impressive networks of bridges and ledges throughout the Forgotten Vale to host their settlements on. According to some scholars and Knight-Paladin Gelebor the last surviving uncorrupted Falmer, they're beginning to venture above ground, and demonstrate cunning and deductive reasoning in their battle tactics.
• The monsters of Evolve fall under this. Story-wise, they're at least as intelligent as humans, identifying specific threats and adapting their tactics in response. One can only imagine the horror as the colonists realized that not only were these things massive and deadly, but intelligent as well. In-game, their intelligence depends on the player controlling them. This could range from simply being able to recognize a few strategies to openly toying with the hunters by dissecting and countering their advantages and tactics.
• Fallout:
  • Deathclaws, twelve-foot-tall bipedal reptilian killing machines, are smart enough to open doors, something many Fallout 3 players found out the hard way. Fallout 4, meanwhile, has a whole questline about a party of mercenaries that was tracked down and slaughtered by an angry Deathclaw after they stole its eggs. Should the player choose to return the last surviving egg to the Deathclaw nest, another Deathclaw will jump in out of nowhere, cover up the egg, and then watch warily, letting the player character walk away unharmed.
  • The player character gets put on the receiving end of this trope in the Old World Blues DLC of Fallout: New Vegas. The Courier's brain and various organs have been removed and replaced with Tesla coils and cybernetic organs by the Sink's Auto-Doc, a process that normally destroys the patient's brain and leaves the rest to wander Big MT as a mindless, aggressive zombie. It takes the Think Tank quite a while to realize that their newest "lobotomite" has been tracking their conversation and can, in fact, understand and respond to every word they've been saying.
• The Aragami in God Eater are an interesting example. Though they behave like constantly-evolving mindless beasts, they aren't actually "evolving" at all. Instead, they learn new configurations for themselves from the environment. For instance, the Chi-You type Aragami use the "bring it" gesture and martial arts moves. Another Aragami takes it cues from a tank, complete with biological missile launchers, but the treads are crudly adapted into misshapen forelegs. This is an enigma in-universe since it clearly implies higher learning ability, yet the only behaviour they display beyond violence and consumption is pack scavenging. And then there are humanoid Aragami, who can very quickly learn how social structures work, and eventually internalize concepts like empathy.
• Half-Life
  • Everyone thought the Vortigaunts were just dumb slaves. Turns out they really aren't, as shown in 2.
  • Combine Gunships of Half-Life 2 are smart enough to realize that rockets are the only thing capable of harming them, so they accordingly try to shoot any enemy-fired rockets down. The gunships are a particularly interesting example, because the programmers didn't mean for this to happen. It was just a fluke of the AI programming to fire at the biggest threat (which the programmers were thinking meant anyone armed with a rocket launcher). When they first saw it happen in testing, it looked like a Real Life example, and decided to keep it.
  • A Fast Zombie in Episode One will, if you throw a grenade at it, lob it right back. It was originally a physics glitch, but the developers liked the idea and ran with it.
• The Flood in Halo. When first encountered in Halo: Combat Evolved, they seem like dumb zombies, just running toward you and whipping you with their Combat Tentacles. The first Oh, Crap! moment comes when they suddenly start using weapons. Then 343 Guilty Spark warns you that they're going to repair the Pillar of Autumn to escape from Halo. Wait... repair?! Turns out that they gain intelligence from the sentient beings they assimilate; they almost used Keyes' brain as a Borrowed Biometric Bypass to get to Earth. Then in Halo 2, they not only start attacking you with vehicles, but it's revealed that they're being coordinated by an ancient and highly intelligent Hive Mind; by the start of Halo 3, they've successfully taken over High Charity and several of its escort ships, and are poised to begin a galaxy-scale infestation.
  • The Forerunner Saga reveals the true extent of their intelligence; the Flood are the direct descendants of the Precursors (not to be confused with the Forerunners), who were the most technologically advanced species to ever live in the Milky Way, and have inherited all of their knowledge. This means that a sufficiently large infestation is capable of technological feats far more advanced than what any other species in the galaxy is capable of; the Forerunners had a huge Oh, Crap! moment when the Flood started reactivating Precursor relics. And then another whammy reveals itself: The Flood are not the Precursors, but a Precursor, one who transferred its essence into the Gravemind and took it over, which is what gave the Flood its sapience; before this, it was a ghastly, if somewhat manageable, parasite. After that? Full-on Outside-Context Problem.
• The Beast from Homeworld Cataclysm starts "merely" as a ship-consuming techno-organic virus, but having absorbed enough data from the assimilated ships it becomes self-concious, learns to synthesize itself a Voice of the Legion from their communication records and becomes smart enough to strike deals with other villains (and even to screw them over).
• In the first Hunter: The Reckoning video game, when the Hunters first meet Carpenter and he speaks to them, they promptly react by pointing their guns at him. Carpenter responds with this speech:
  Carpenter: Do you think I can't see you shaking at the other end of that barrel? Do you think I don't know your brain is trying to process the horrible fact that 'Oh my god it talks!' and if it talks, it thinks, and you can't stand that, can you?
• In The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, using objects found around the battlefield as bludgeons and projectiles will result in hearing the horrified voices of your assailants as they realize the Hulk is no mere mindless brute.
  "It's constructing a rudimentary weapon!"
  "It's learning as it goes, sir!"
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • As Yen Sid explains in Kingdom Hearts II, this is what separates the Heartless from the Nobodies; while the Heartless are little more than mindless animals who function on instinct, the Nobodies are fully capable of thinking things through and planning ahead.
  • Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, aka Xehanort's Heartless, is in fact a Heartless himself, but retains all of his human intelligence and selfhood; the real Ansem the Wise theorizes that this is because Ansem/ Terra-Xehanort willingly became a Heartless.
  • Kairi is able to realize that the Shadow following them is Sora because it shows signs of intelligence most Shadows don't. (Presumably for the same reason as Ansem, Sora willingly chose to become a heartless)
• Kirby:
  • The Master Crown in Kirby's Return to Dream Land. At first glance, it just looks like a powerful artifact that grants its wearer great powers such as ripping apart time and space itself to create rifts to other dimensions. However, when seen on Magolor's head, it can be seen wiggling around and its claws wrap themselves around his ears, implying that the crown is sentient and controlling him. In addition, Magolor Soul's pause description implies that he is outright possessed by the Master Crown and has turned into an Empty Shell. Deluxe confirms all of this - according to its pause description, whoever wears the crown will not only be granted great powers, but the crown will use The Power of Hate to fuel the wearer's heart with darkness and will slowly be turned into a Omnicidal Maniac and drive them to destroy everything. We see this in action in the Magolor Epilogue, where the crown possesses the restored Gem Apple Seed and turns it into a Botanical Abomination by possessing it. Not only that, but the new Flavor Texts for Magolor Soul focus on freeing him from the darkness of the Master Crown as he slowly becomes the crown himself.
  • There's also Void Termina from Kirby Star Allies. His first form is merely an Almighty Idiot powered by the darkness and hatred in Hyness' heart whose sole instinct is to destroy anything and everything around him. Once he is exposed to Kirby's happiness and friendship, however he starts to become more strategic in his attacks, such as using fire and ice arrows and using replicas of the Master Crown. Once you encounter his true form, he is said to have started thinking and feeling, suggesting that Kirby is somehow causing Void Termina to become sentient and be exposed to feelings. As Void Soul, he gains more sentience and fights without needing to rely on Hyness to do so. Then, as Void, he has gained full sentience as well as fully being exposed to Kirby's joy and happiness as he learns to settle down and enjoy life; this culminates with his Redemption Equals Death moment upon defeat, where Void decides to Go Out with a Smile - Kirby's smile - and is most likely being purged from the darkness it was once powered by.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, the eponymous Majora's Mask reveals itself in the climax to be capable of speech and being the real puppetmaster of the Skull Kid supposedly responsible for all the chaos in Termina. Up until the moment it opens its mouth, Tatl was eager to lay the blame for everything on the Skull Kid.
  • On two occasions plant monsters are shown to be far more intelligent than just mindlessly hungry predators, so much so that they seem wholly sentient. Kalle Demos, the boss of The Forbidden Woods actually waits for Link to arrive before eating Makar and then laughs at Link, while the Big Baba of The Forest Temple leaves a key out in the open until Link arrives and then eats it in front of him, to force him into a confrontation and lure him into range to get it back.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
    • Calamity Ganon is assumed by the inhabitants of Hyrule to be a mindless force of evil and destruction, with its origins as a Gerudo man barely remembered. Everyone is caught off guard when it possesses the Magitek machines that defeated it 10,000 years ago in an act of unexpected tactical foresight.
    • Several of the more humanoid monster types, although Always Chaotic Evil, often show signs of deeper culture and tactical thinking. Bokoblins and Lizalfos will attempt to grab any kind of weapon before engaging you, they'll whack away bombs you toss at them, they'll set weapons on fire if open flames are present to improve their attack strength, and can be seen chatting, dancing, cooking food, and sleeping together peacefully when not aggro-ed. It's mentioned in a side-quest that the Lizalfos once had an advanced kingdom which once warred with and nearly defeated the Zora nation, and both species have scattered settlements around Hyrule.
    • Despite being incredibly aggressive and vicious monsters, the Lynels are described as having "intense intelligent", which is depicted by their comparatively advanced battle tactics. When one spots you, they often won't immediately attack, but just observe you until you pull out a weapon or get too close. Unlike other enemies, they will shoot arrows up in an arc when you get too far or take cover behind an object. They will try to fake you out by charging up one type of attack only to end up performing a different attack. And they aren't fooled by the crude masks that can be used to sneak past other monster types. Their attacks as a whole are also far less telegraphed than basically any other enemy type.
• Man-Eating Plant is a rather odd Android game where you play as... like the title said, a Man-Eating Plant. But you're actually sentient and capable of expressing emotions, including glee and excitement as you gobble up assorted goblins, humans and blobs. With several accompanying thought-bubbles:
  "Hungry... Deeeeeeath! Taaaassste Good!"
• In Mass Effect, you come to a space station which was overrun by rachni, and you can read a log where a scientist states "we treated them like beasts, should have treated them like POW's". Mind you, the race is well known to be sentient - although their appearance can certainly deceive. The theory was that without the connection to the Queen that all the warriors would become mindless beasts, and in the eyes of the Queen that is what they have become, but it turns out they're insane due to a warped childhood; no parental figures, and their lullabies are "Silence of the Void" and "Eldritch Death Knells".
  • In Mass Effect 2, the yahg are revealed to be this. Originally abducted for study, a yahg specimen showed increasing intelligence and was chosen by the Shadow Broker to join a strike team tasked with eliminating threats. The yahg had other plans and decided instead to kill the Shadow Broker and take his place. This yahg remained the Shadow Broker for years until Liara and Commander Shepard show up.
  • It comes up again in the third game, in which it's possible to recruit the rachni against the Reapers. Many characters express a little too much surprise at the technical prowess the rachni display. Hackett Lampshades it, saying that in hindsight, these guys once waged war on the entire galaxy: you can't do that without being very smart and technologically advanced.
• Happens quite a bit in Metroid.
  • In Metroid Fusion, Samus and the computer discover that the X Parasites' capacity for intelligence increases over time, especially since they gain access to their victims' memories and knowledge. The X claim a scientist so they can set the station's core to meltdown, destroy all of Samus' upgrade access points, and steal an upgrade for themselves.
  • The fact that the icy, blue X which once targeted Samus for her newly-found weakness to the cold (due to her now part-Metroid DNA), start to run away from her soon after she recovers the Varia suit, which negates this weakness, but not before a few of them suicide dive you, then the others flee when they see it's not hurting you anymore.
  • The X continue to show off in Metroid Dread, as once they break out of quarantine on ZDR, one of them possesses Experiment No. Z-57 and tries to block up the thermal vents in Cataris in order to freeze over the planet and kill Samus via her Metroid vulnerablility. Only the fact that Samus just got the Gravity Suit prevents this from working. It also fights smart during the boss fight.
  • Implied with the series' titular creatures in Metroid II: Return of Samus. Samus's weapons and upgrades are typically acquired through Chozo statues. In this game when you find the statue offering the Ice Beam, it's been seriously damaged; the head has been torn off and the body slightly crumbled. Metroid have a crippling weakness to extreme cold, making the Ice Beam an incredibly effective weapon against them. The fact that this statue is the one that's been damaged makes it clear that they attempted to destroy the upgrade to keep anyone from using it.
• Monster Hunter:
  • Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate: In the G-rank missions, you receive reports that a number of fortifications have come under attack and their damaged parts are missing without a trace. At the end, you fight a Neopteron known as the Ahtal-ka, who doesn't appear to put up much of a fight... ...and then it hops into a web-spliced Humongous Mecha built from those very same missing parts.
  • Monster Hunter: World:
    • The game has Pukei-Pukei during the The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt crossover quest - if you have Geralt free it from being trapped in roots produced by Leshen, not only will it help you fight the Leshen, but if it survives the battles, it will outright try to thank Geralt by giving him an attack gem.
  • Ruiner Nergigante in the Iceborne expansion. It was trying to eat Shara Ishvalda, another Elder Dragon that was causing mass destruction across the New World, but knew it couldn't drag it out of hiding alone. So it waited where Shara Ishvalda was likely to be, made a show of fighting the Sapphire Star, played dead even whilst being carved, and then dealt the killing blow to Shara Ishvalda after it was weakened by the hunters. And then, since it likely knew it couldn't take on 12 Hunters at once, it opted to just fly away after the kill rather than sticking around to eat its meal. In short, this thing appears to be capable of what seem to be rudimentary plans.
  • Monster Hunter: Rise introduces a bunch of monsters that can think. Bishaten, Tetranadon, Goss Harag, Somnacanth, the list goes on. The new Elder Dragons, Wind Serpent Ibushi and Thunder Serpent Narwa, top them all with disturbingly human thoughts (even though they're mostly about how horny they are).
• The Shades from NieR. At the beginning, they seem like mindless monsters. By the end, they're using weapons and armor, and they can sucker the title character into a deadly ambush with one of the Plot Coupons. This is a big part of The Reveal: Shades are human souls stripped from their bodies.
• NieR: Automata explores this with the Machine Lifeforms. While some of the androids of YoRHa, like 9S, are quick to dismiss Machine Lifeforms as unthinking automatons who act without any rhyme or reason, there are some that exhibit varying — and increasing — levels of intelligence, enough to found communities, civilizations, and even religious cults. The Reveal that YoRHa androids are built using Machine Lifeform cores makes them more alike than unlike.
• Nihilumbra: The Void is not just some mindless force of nature, it's learning how to hunt you down better.
• One of the more terrifying aspects of Penumbra: Black Plague is this trope. The dog/wolf monsters in Overture seemed to just be aggressive beasts. Your first encounter with one of the infected in Black Plague? It's looking for you with a flashlight in its hand.
• In Project × Zone, after defeating Nemesis for the first time, it utters its Catchphrase as usual, prompting both Chris and Jill to comment that they now work for BSAA. And then...
  Nemesis: B......S......AA......!
• Redlight in [PROTOTYPE] seems like your typical zombie plague. In the backstory, however, is the way the first outbreak occurred: after the test subjects - a few citizens of a small town - were infected, nothing happened at all for four years until the scientists who'd expected a spectacular response packed up and let their guard down. At that point every single subject - by then the entire town - suddenly mutated and attacked all at once. The Virus had waited patiently, spreading quietly, for just such an opportunity. It only acts that way when it has a Runner to direct it, though; the rest of the time, it really is your typical zombie plague.
  • And of course the next iteration, Blacklight, is a fully sapient individual, obviously capable of complex independent thought, speech, planning, and emotions - Alex Mercer, the player character. Then you find out what the real Alex had done: namely, in a gesture of revenge against his former employers, he released the Blacklight Virus upon the city of Manhattan before being gunned down. Upon finding this out, the virus itself is disgusted and appalled.
• In Raiden V, after exploring the cave full of crystals in Stage 2, Max comes up with a hypothesis that the Crystals are actually an intelligent lifeform that can communicate with one another mutually. Max's suspicions are confirmed when he made an SOS call to a French port, where the Crystals were for sure staging an attack, as that is where Max sent a shipment of the crystals he retrieved from the cave. Upon meeting Kraken, Max's concerns grow even more as it showed the Crystals can upgrade the machinery they contaminate. Later on, Max orders a mission to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) facility, where the shipment of crystals from the cave ended up. As Max expected, there was a massive amount of contaminated machinery invading the LHC. Max then hypothesized that the Crystals had a sort of commander giving orders, as the LHC invasion was organized as if it was a precision military operation. Again, Max was proven right. With the help of Valbarossa Hawkeye after her flagship was contaminated and the information from the SHIFT facility they destroyed, Max and Eshiria were able to determine that all of Max's hypotheses were unfortunately true, with Helga confirming that the information stored on one crystal is shared collectively with all the others. This necessitates Helga relaying the order from the council for the Bellwether and Fighting Thunder to launch a counter-offensive towards the Crystal's homeworld in order to put an end to their threat once and for all.
  Helga (regarding the Crystals' intelligence): I've heard that even among terrestrial lifeforms, if an individual learns a new way to hunt, the same method of hunting was suddenly acquired by other individuals all around the world. This may be like the collective unconscious that Jung talked about.
  Max: It's hard for me to understand difficult things, so can you explain it in more layman's terms?
  Helga: Simply said, the information that comes into contact with crystals is being leaked to all the contaminated weapons.
  Max: I see. So they are making it as unclear as possible as to where they're heading.
  Helga: That's correct.
• Many of the monsters from the Resident Evil series have varying displays of intelligence.
  • The Nintendo GameCube remake of the first game uses this as a Tear Jerker when battling Lisa Trevor. You can fight her by knocking her off the ledge, but if you push the four boulders off the edge to crack open the grave where her mother's body is, she'll sadly take the skull and jump from the ledge herself.
    Lisa: Moth...ther...
  • Similarly, when she appears in the Wesker levels of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, she displays a decent degree of planning and understanding. She appears to recognize Wesker as one of the people responsible for turning her into a monster and hunts him relentlessly, unlike the other survivors who she really only attacked when they entered her living spaces and wouldn't bother to chase them once they left. She also lies in wait to ambush him, and even seems to understand that the mansion is minutes away from blowing up as she does everything in her power to block Wesker from escaping out the front door.
  • The T-00 Tyrant from Resident Evil 2 (AKA: "Mr. X" or "Trenchy" depending on the version) is smarter than the zombies and other creatures you have to deal with, having been created specifically to Leave No Witnesses and to retrieve a G-Virus sample. Notably this actually works against it late in the game as Claire manages to dupe it into falling off a catwalk and falling into a massive smelting tank using a sample of the G-Virus as bait — the thing is so fixated on it that literally all it thinks about is getting that sample, like a computer program or an ant following a pheromone, and so it runs right off the edge trying to grab it and falls to its death or so Claire thinks. The Remake ramps the Tyrant's intelligence up even further, such that it spends its time in the Raccoon City Police Department looking for you specifically, honing in on any loud sounds you make from slamming doors or firing your gun. If a zombie stands between it and you, it will shove it out of the way. Conversely, if it sees a zombie grab you, it will stand and watch: if the zombie ends up killing you, it still technically counts as destroying its target. If you try to fire at its face, it will raise a hand up to block your bullets. Overall, the Remake version of the Tyrant is a methodical — and unrelenting — hunter. It even seems to be fond of its hat, as if you shoot the hat off and then manage to ditch it, you might catch a glimpse of it morosely feeling its hatless head.
  • The Nemesis from Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. Unlike all the other monsters up to this point, it is smart enough to follow orders, track the main character, open doors, use weapons, set ambushes, and speak (albeit only one word: "S.T.A.R.S.", his mission target). Even when Jill tries to make her escape via helicopter, Nemesis is smart enough to shoot the helicopter with a rocket launcher to cut off her escape.^note Though not smart enough to wait for her to board the helicopter first. Later game events imply, especially in the remake, that he's purposely toying with her to make his hunt more fun.
  • Those infected with Las Plagas, as seen in both Resident Evil 4 and 5, are practically human in intelligence. They are capable of using weaponry, setting traps, cooperating with each other, and (depending on the actual host) can even speak properly. A good example would be the Verdugo. If you blast it with a rocket launcher, it shrugs off the explosion and tauntingly wags its "finger" at you before resuming its attack.
  • Resident Evil 6 features several monsters that are quite intelligent than the standard RE enemies:
    • First off, the game features an evil(er) knockoff of The Nemesis with Ustanak. It's smart enough to predict where you're going and set a trap rather than just smash through the wall to keep chasing you, select and equip weapons, and even deploy small flying creatures in a search pattern to cut off your escape and track you down. And if you think you outsmarted it by hiding in the dumpster, try it three times.
    • Secondly, The C-Virus zombies are considerably smarter than the T-Virus ones. They can use tools such as melee weapons and guns (though not very well), and even climb over obstacles such as fences.
    • Lastly there's the J'Avo, who have retained almost at the very least enough intelligence to behave like normal soldiers.
  • Rachael from Resident Evil: Revelations seems to exhibit this trope when it starts jumping out or air vents to attack you.
  • The Lycans from Resident Evil Village have degraded into savage beasts, but are still smart enough to stage ambushes, use weapons, and strategize (e.g. dodging and keeping a safe distance) when facing the player.
• The Scurge in Scurge: Hive.
  • Interestingly enough, it's initially averted, then the aversion subverted, because a mid-game conversation points out that the Scurge originally didn't have any sort of sentient thought. It only began to develop such after absorbing enough sentient life that it began to form its own collective mindset and began planning its escape.
• In Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire, the Progenitor factions initially think of humans as relatively-intelligent animals rather than sentient beings. A couple of Encyclopedia Exposita entries and vignette events show them as taken off guard when humans prove them otherwise.

Missile attack on Zeta-5: humans activate first defense successful. Afterwards: danger posed by innovation suddenly clear.

— Usurper Judaa Marr, "Human : Nature"

• Played for Laughs on Slime Rancher with BOb, an NPC who is a pile of Pink Slimes in a trenchcoat who can be spoken to on the Ranch Exchange, revealing that the various slimes are indeed capable of speech and using technology. However, all he, they, whatever uses it for is to ask for chickens to eat with hilariously bad grammar and spelling.
  PSs.-- chickKn
• Several mutants in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. will use this:
  • One notable example has you wandering through an abandoned building and hearing the sound of a crying baby, coming from inside a closet. There's a Burer waiting inside for you to open the door.
  • Another example of this has a Controller growling to you a chilling warning ("LEAVE HERE, MAN!") should you approach the entrance of the cave it's dwelling inside.
  • As for Bloodsuckers, well, they will use dangerously efficient stalking and hunting tactics when facing you, and you will feel like prey if you're attacked by more than one of them at once. There's also a bit where one leaves a dying man on the floor crying out for help as bait to lure you into the open so it can pounce.
• StarCraft:
  • Arcturus Mengsk (and the Confederate scientists he stole the idea from) thought the Zerg were just a sort of eusocial animal that swarmed to whatever planet he placed a Psi-Emitter on. Oh, how wrong he was...
  • Even the Protoss thought this at first, until a Zerg probe they captured revealed that it was, in fact, looking for them.
  • And invoked in Hearts of the Swarm. Kerrigan's broodmothers are capable of autonomy and building up a force, but lack the strategic vision to be truly dangerous, so she has them intentionally made smarter. When pointed out this makes them a danger to her, too, she says she wants them as dangerous as possible.
  • The Primal Zerg that remain on Zerus, unlike the Zerg that were integrated into a Hive Mind by the Xel'Naga, are sapient intelligent predators that have spent generations hunting, killing, and adapting. They consider the other Zerg to be corrupted.
• Like most Vaults, the Vault of the Traveller in Tales from the Borderlands contains an obligatory giant monster, the largest one seen in the series, in fact. It comes as a horrifying realization to the characters that this one is actually intelligent. It's smart enough to leave Gortys alive because it knows that it will disappear if she is killed, and when hit with an ineffective attack, it laughs. To make matters worse, it's main ability is one you really don't want a smart opponent to have: Teleport Spam.
• This results in a Mass "Oh, Crap!" from the whole party in Tales of Vesperia when it turns out a monster that has been harassing them as they traverse a dungeon (on the way to the Disc-One Final Dungeon) has actually been herding them into a trap. It takes the resident party Cowardly Lion stepping up and deciding to Hold the Line despite the risks for them to survive.
• According to the Tempedia in Temtem, some species show signs of intelligence:
  • The care with which Valash sharpens its claws is a sign of primitive sapience.
  • Seismunch is nearing proto-human cognition, as it tends to mimic human behaviours such as martial arts poses (which can be seen in its battle animations).
  • Pupoise is adaptable and known to use tools in the wild.
• Implied with some of the zombies in Timesplitters: Future Perfect, who are perfectly capable of weaponizing guns against you.
• Warframe:
  • During the Second Dream quest, it's revealed that your Warframe is exactly that, just a mindless bio-mechanical frame piloted by the actual Tenno, the player character. However, after the Stalker stabs his new sword right through its chest and starts strangling the Operator, it springs back to life and rips the sword in half, forcing the Stalker to retreat.
  • This is taken further in the "Sacrifice" quest with Excalibur Umbra. When you first try to pilot him, he throws you out, almost kills you, and then starts running around the system slaughtering everything in his path. When you finally get control of him for good, his passive ability is that he can act independently when you are outside in Operator mode (normally warframes just stand still like statues without an Operator piloting them).
  • Warframe also has the Infested, the results of a techno-organic virus infecting and mutating various people and machines in the setting. Typically, Infested will mindlessly swarm the Tenno or whatever else they're attacking... until you encounter bosses. Which will talk to you and use fairly good tactics to try to kill the squad.
• Many of the monsters from The Evil Within are definitely not mindless. This especially applies to the Haunted; they're capable of using weapons ranging from simple knives to firearms, dodging the player's attacks, setting up traps and ambushes, cooperating with each other, and often like to play possum.

Web Animation

• Parodied and taken to extremes in the How It Should Have Ended video "How Jurassic Park Should Have Ended". The Velociraptor figures out how to speak, finds a weapons closet, sends an email to the protagonists, and tries to attack them with guns.
• RWBY: The creatures of Grimm are generally mindless, but grow more powerful and intelligent as they age. The most powerful Grimm are smart enough to avoid humans rather than attack outright and will employ simplistic tactics in battle. This increases their survivability and threat level with time. Subverted by one type of Grimm that is introduced in Volume 8. The Hound displays human-level intelligence, battle tactics, and the ability to talk. However, this intelligence is not connected to the aging process, it's because Salem has started transforming people into Grimm.

Webcomics

• DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything: The Final Die turns out to be sentient. Dongtae asks if the embodiment of all human Desire has a wish of its own. It decides it can act independently, and while it still obeys X, it revives everyone who've died in the arena and makes X play fair for the last time.
• Showed up with the Diamondshell Beetles in Schlock Mercenary — we, and the mercenaries, perceive them as just big, ugly monsters, but they're actually fairly intelligent, communicate amongst themselves, figure out how to use human weaponry in a surprisingly short amount of time, and see the humans (and, in particular, Sergeant Schlock) as frightening monsters…
  • To be fair, even Schlock's friends think of him as some sort of monster.
  • Another example with some rather chilling implications are the planet sized Dark Matter Entities. Just one of them could manhandle a battleplate^note one of the most powerful warships known to man and they're not just fully sapient but completely xenophobic; they are convinced that the only way to survive a universe full of civilizations that run on teleportation which is inadvertently killing them off is to kill them all first. They conquered the entire Andromeda galaxy, wiped it clean of non-dark matter life forms, and turned their galactic core into a thermonuclear sniper rifle that can pinpoint anything in the Milky Way.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: This seems to be the case with the Plague Zombie monsters and their spirits, especially their Body of Bodies variants that are likely combining the mental power of their components. The bodies composing one giant are seen going for the weapons of humans defending against it, while the Merger of Souls that is shaping up to be the prime antagonist is able to lead coordinated attack with a large number of trolls and ghosts.
• Trevor (2020): While Trevor seems to have completely lost his mind and is acting purely on instinct, he retains enough cunning to figure out how to maneuver himself closer to his victims.

Web Original

• Averted in Goodbye Strangers. Even though strangers display human-like emotions, often in very unsettling ways, and some strains even have social behaviors, they seem to have little to no capacity for thought at all. They are effectively mindless and do not have a thoughtform, which is equivalent to a soul. All of their behavior is instinctual. Even though several kinds of strangers can use human language, there are no known strangers that can actually have conversations.
• Subverted in The Magnus Archives. The monsters on the Earth are often sapient, but they constantly have to remind the institute staff that the Eldritch Abominations they serve barely think at all. At least, not like us. And then one of them learns how to.
• In Twig, the increasingly desperate rebellion makes use of forbidden experimentation with primordial life to create a Living Weapon to use against the Crown. When Reverend Mauer visits the experiments, however, he realizes that the Adaptive Ability of primordial life has allowed them to rapidly develop sapience and learn human language based on overheard conversations by reading their body language and noting how they react to his words.

Western Animation

• Parodied in The Critic. In a clip from a fictional Jurassic Park 2 (this episode was made before the actual release of The Lost World: Jurassic Park obviously), Ian Malcolm, John Hammond and Alexa Murphy trap a velociraptor in a closet. After Ian remarks that raptors are too intelligent to be held in a closet, the raptor slips a newspaper under the door, rattles the door until the key falls out, retrieves the key, and unlocks the door before continuing to attack. While comforting Alexa, Hammond angrily states to the raptor that while it may devour him and the others, he will never escape the island. However, rather than killing the three characters, the raptor reveals that he can talk with a British accent while producing a calabash pipe and disagreeing with Hammond's statement. The raptor then tells Hammond about his true plan for himself and the other raptors to escape the island by "building a crude suspension bridge to Venezuela, where I shall lie low and assume odd jobs under the name 'Mr. Pilkington.' But perhaps I've said too much."
• The fifth episode of Generator Rex deals with a Hidden Elf Village of engineers and scientists trying to build a transmitter/receiver to communicate with the nanites. Then in the next episode, Rex tries to shut down a really, really big EVO created using nanites siphoned from his body, and the nanites try to talk to him.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Zillo Beast is suggested to be sentient, demonstrated by how it not only seems angered by Palpatine's suggestion to kill it and seeks revenge on him specifically as soon as it escapes captivity, but how it, according to Word of God, realizes that Palpatine is secretly evil.
• The Beetle Drones of Samurai Jack generally seem like mindless robots who enforce Aku's rule without hesitation. However, in the 3-part series premiere, after Jack destroys almost an entire army of them, one of the remaining robots seems to have recognized that defeating Jack is impossible and takes a step back. Jack quickly tells the drone there is no escape and destroys the rest of them. In another episode, a group of Beetle Drones are attempting to stop Jack from reaching a time portal; Jack predictably cuts them all down, but the last one seems to realize that it can't beat Jack and instead destroys the portal before Jack can stop it.
• Transformers:
  • Tankor from Beast Machines, after god only knows how long of mindlessly following orders and roaring Tankor... SMASH, suddenly reveals he's a lot smarter than his allies thought. He used to be Rhinox, after all. This isn't the first time Megatron has turned Rhinox into one of his own... with the same result.
  • Predaking from Transformers: Prime displays surprising intelligence for a supposed beast in all of its appearances. At one point, we even see him reading a screen when everyone leaves the room, playing the role of a mindless smasher until he's ready to reveal his true intelligence. The episode "Plus One" ends with Starscream ranting about having to deal with such a stupid beast, while the beast in question is logging into one of the warship's data terminals with Starscream's password. This culminates in "Evolution" when he responds to Starscream's latest abuse by transforming and threatening to kill Starscream. Megatron for one is very unhappy with this turn of events. He wanted a mindless beast he could control. Instead, he got a powerful, intelligent, and ambitious warrior who is a potential threat.
    Predaking: I only recently became aware of my abilities. All I remember of my beginning is hunting, and battle, and the wounding of my pride. Thus I'd begun to burn with questions. "Who am I?" "Where did I come from?" The warship's data banks provided historical fact, but still I possessed no memory of my own past, so I began to reconsider my place in the present and wondered, "Could I be like the others?" And now I know.
• A gag in Over the Garden Wall has Wirt, Gregory, and Beatrice dining in the manor of an eccentric man, sharing the table with the horse they stole last episode. When Beatrice and Gregory discuss robbing the man, it's suddenly revealed that the horse is sapient and sentient.
  Beatrice: I was thinking more like flat-out stealing from [their host].
  Wirt: What? No way.
  Beatrice: Why not? We already stole a horse.
  Wirt: No, we didn't. Fred's a talking horse. He can do whatever he wants.
  Fred the Horse: I want to steal.
• The New Adventures of Jonny Quest features the plant monster in "Creeping Unknown." Initially it seems as if it's just a mindless walking mass of living squicky plant matter... but then it's revealed it has genius-level intellect, making it one of the Quests' most dangerous enemies in any incarnation of the show. Or at least it would be if it didn't have such a Weaksauce Weakness.
• What If…? (2021) has the zombie superheroes featured in Episode 5. While they aren't as sapient as they were in the Marvel Zombies comic, they still demonstrate enough knowledge to make use of their powers or gadgets to effectively catch prey. They're even smart enough to talk (Happy Hogan is still calling his repulsor blasts after being infected), and to mourn (zombified Scarlet Witch sadly cradles Vision's corpse after he rips out the Mind Stone for the survivor group).
• Primal (2019): The "Madman" initially seems like a feral, primordial beast with no real thought process beyond killing anything in sight, but as the night goes on and it hunts the Historical Society, it displays increasing amounts of cunning and observational skills that make it clear there is some intelligence behind it's savagery. Most notably, when it gets ahold of Blakely, it seems like it's going to kill him like everyone else it's gotten so far… until it notices Darlington and Charles taking aim with their guns and holds up Blakely as a human shield before tossing him at them and fleeing in the confusion, having clearly realized (correctly) that the other men wouldn't shoot through their friend.

Real Life

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.
    • 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 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.
• 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 of 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.
• 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 orcas^note Yes, they're called "killer whales", but taxonomically they're a species of dolphin. Don't blame us, blame colloquial English, 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.
  • 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.
• 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. The only thing they don't learn is not to eat their trainer.
  • 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. It's most acute with people who can't talk, particularly non-verbal autistic people, who often feel like they have to "prove" that they're sentient.
• 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.

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