• Question: How do we know we're a super intelligent species and animals aren't just as smart?

    Asked by Ifeanyi :) on 15 Jan 2025.
    • Photo: Heather Thompson

      Heather Thompson answered on 15 Jan 2025:

      That all depends on what you mean by “intelligence”! Animals are very smart. And lots of them can do amazing things that we can’t. We can measure intelligence in lots of different ways and I suppose it all depends on what job you want to get done, as to how a creature will measure up on your scale. There is a well known quote which I love: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Comments

  • Photo: melissau

    melissau commented on :

    Animals are extremely intelligent. Just because they can’t speak, we may assume that they are less intelligent than us, but we’d be wrong to do that. Many animals can solve problems, learn from past experience how to do things better, communicate messages to both other animals in the same species and to other species of animals. Studying animal behaviour and animal cognition are sciences in their own right.