3 Time animals were smarter than humans

4 min readOct 15, 2020

You are incredibly smart. You can read, write, and do arithmetic. Humans are so intelligent that they figured out how to go to the moon and how to alter genes. Is your ego growing yet? It is easy to be full of yourself and thus underestimate other species. What if we take away our calculators and other tools? How smart is the average person then? What if we compared ourselves to other species? Believe it or not, sometimes we are not the smartest one for the job… Here are three stories when animals have been smarter than humans. (Keep reading to the end I saved the best for last)

1

We all know that chimpanzees are smart animals. A study called Numerical Memory Span in a Chimpanzee tested a group of chimpanzees on their ability to memorize numbers. Number 1–10 were flashed quickly on the screen and then disappeared. The chimps would then have to remember where each number was located. The chimps performed surprisingly well. Another research project tested chimps on game theory. That is a test that requires both individuals to work together in order to minimize risk for both. The interesting part is that in both tests the chimps out preforms the humans that took the same test.

P.S. You can find part of the Numerical Memory Span study on google scholar but unfortunately, not all of it is free. There are multiple studies with chimps doing game theory that are available to read.

2

Calling someone a bird brain is considered an insult in our society but it really shouldn’t be. Every story I read about crows seems to have another example of their intelligence. For example, they have been known to remember who is kind and who is mean to them and will tell other crows. These crows will often enact revenge or bring gifts to humans. Crows also are very well known to make tools for themselves in order to get food, both in the lab and in the wild. In this particular video, a researcher captures wild crows and gives them complex puzzles to solve in order to get the treat. This video shows a puzzle consisting of eight parts that need to be solved in the correct order in order to complete the task. The bird honestly did it faster than I probably would have if I gave it a try.

If you want to see for yourself, watch the video here: https://gizmodo.com/watch-a-genius-crow-solve-8-complex-puzzles-in-perfect-1520343494

3

It’s easy to think that insects don’t have much going on, but they may be smarter than you think. For the last example, we are going to look at bees. Bees do a “waggle dance” to tell other members of the hive where food is. They wiggle in a straight line and then they circle back around and do it again. The direction of the line compared to the sun correlates to where the food is located. If the bee wiggles a line perpendicular to the sun and he is heading to the left the other bees know that when they leave the hive they have to go 90 degrees to the left of the sun. The length of the wiggle tells the others how far it is. You don’t have to completely understand what I just said to realize that is pretty smart, but that is only half of it.

The forager bee can tell the hive of multiple locations. The amazing part is that if bee #2 goes to the first location and sees that it is all used up it can then go to the second location without returning to the hive!!! Wait…. I don’t think you realized how impressive that is. Refer to the picture below. The forager bee told everyone how to get to each spot relative to the hive (line X and Y). So the second bee knows how to get to X and Y from the hive but it uses geometry to figure out the angle and distance it must fly to get from the first food source to the second without going back (line Z). Bees literally do geometry on the fly. In fact, they are probably much better at geometry than you or me.

Don’t think that this is a very handpicked selected cases of the most intelligent animals where they just happen to out preform humans. Animals show off their intelligence all the time, for example:

dolphins use complex noises that is something similar to a “language”
elephants use cooperation
so many animals can remember locations and solutions to the problems for years
numerous animals have self-recognition
once an octopus was climbing out of a tank finding his food and returning to his tank back before his owner found out
there is one dog that learned over 1000 words and their meanings
apes have learned some vocabulary through sign language

I could go on, but you get the point. Animals are constantly showing off how smart they are. Often we just don’t understand what they are doing or we are looking at it from our perspective, not theirs. So next time you think ‘oh it’s just some stupid animal,’ give them a little more credit.

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