Rating of the most intelligent animals

Man is accustomed to consider himself the most intelligent being on Earth. Despite his very weak physical abilities, he manages the lion's share of the land and makes attempts to" enslave " the world's oceans. As for the animals, their importance was downplayed allegedly due to the lack of intelligence. 

But do not underestimate the mental abilities of our younger brothers, because some of them are not as stupid as it seems at first glance.

Animals may not have enough intelligence to call them "intelligent", but some of them are definitely smarter and smarter than others. For example, pigs. They are easy to learn, have an excellent memory and demonstrate high results in intelligence tests.

A certain level of intelligence is observed in parrots, in particular-in jacko. Yes, in most cases, they simply repeat the sounds they heard without understanding their meaning, but this is due to the lack of proper training. It is proved that they are able to associate words with the objects that they denote, as well as perceive the concept of shape, color, ordinal number.

Squirrels are not only smart, but also cunning. They have long learned that man is a source of food. If you once fed a squirrel, it is likely that the next day it will wait for you at the same place, "recognize" and take food again. And she will take as much as you give — she just hides the leftovers, remembering the "cache".

The" best friend of man " is a dog-a very intelligent creature. With proper training, she is able to understand 250 words and gestures, count up to five, perform the simplest mathematical actions. It is worth mentioning that the most intelligent dog breed is poodles.

Of course, this rating could not do without seals. Domestic cats are very smart — their main sign of intelligence is the ability to adapt. Moreover, if your murka does not follow the command that you taught her, it does not mean that she has forgotten it. Rather, she simply does not want to fulfill it: the ability to say "no" is also a sign of intelligence and willpower.

There are legends about the mind of ravens — these birds are able to do incredible things to get to food, for example, crack a nut, putting it under the wheels of a car, etc. When scientists decided to check whether the raven is really endowed with intelligence, the bird was given water to drink from a deep jug, which he could not reach with his beak. The test raven thought of throwing various objects into the container so that the water level would rise. In general, these birds will definitely find a way out of any situation!

That's who you hardly expected to see in this rating, so it's octopuses! These marine invertebrates are endowed with a very impressive brain relative to body weight. They are amenable to training, have a good memory, distinguish geometric shapes, recognize people, get used to those who feed them. Some mystics believe that octopuses are able to predict the future: what is the epic with Paul, the "football oracle", worth?

Elephants open the top three "smartest" animals. They recognize themselves in a mirror image, which is considered a sign of self — awareness, have excellent long-term memory and orientation on the terrain, are able to use tools (for example, branches as "fly swatchers"), distinguish a lot of sounds, and most importantly-they are very susceptible to the death of their fellows. These giants are able to draw conclusions and empathize!

Chimpanzees, especially bonobos, are very intelligent creatures and the closest relatives of humans in the animal world. Although chimpanzees cannot speak because of the structure of the vocal apparatus, they are able to communicate with their hands in sign language, use words in a figurative sense, create new concepts by combining known words. They are able to make tools (clean sticks from leaves, sharpen sticks and stones) and have a sense of humor. If you put a baby chimpanzee and a child next to each other, then you will not find any difference between them intellectually until the age of 2 (sometimes the chimpanzee is even smarter).

Perhaps the most powerful intelligence among animals is endowed with dolphins. And no wonder! A dolphin's brain weighs about 1,700 g, and a human's weighs 1,400 g, while a dolphin has twice as many convolutions in the cerebral cortex as a human. According to the latest scientific data of cognitive ethology and zoopsychology, dolphins not only have a "vocabulary" (up to 14,000 sound signals) that allows them to communicate with each other, but also have self-awareness, "social consciousness" and emotional empathy. Moreover, each dolphin has its own name, to which it responds when its relatives address it! Obviously, humans are not the only "intelligent" creatures, except that they are much more aggressive.