Which earth animal do you think is the most intelligent?

Question

Explain why you think that animal is intelligent.
In this regard Human Beings are animals, but human ability itself can not be used as a measure for the intelligence of other animals.
Insects are also reagarded as animals, but for this question, but not germs or bacteria.

Most answers so far are judging the intelligence of non human animals, by their ability to do things which humans do.
Just because humans do something it doesn't mean it is the intelligent things for other animals to do.

Answer 1

Depends what kind of intelligence. Dogs and elephants possibly most emotionally intelligent, birds (esp. parrots, vultures and falcons and corvids) are academically intelligent, but there's soooo many grey areas. Dolphins and chimps are notoriously intelligent, but chimps are just humans that are kinder to their environment, and dolphins are quite instinctive. Instinct is different from intelligence: intelligence is learned behaviour. Humans are intelligent in some ways, but unbelievable stupid in others. I suppose we have reckless intelligence: we do things without thought of the consequences, and we depend enormously on our emotions. But, put a juvenile human on its own in the middle of a forest without any help or experience, and whilst the forest animals go about their daily business it will starve and die. Humans depend on each other a lot as well.

Answer 2

Rats and it is the truth. The rats or mices have alot of enemies (eagle, lions , owls and etc)
To prove:
1)If i put a poison to kill rats, the mechanism of the reaction towards this poison will be :
The rats /mices will send the weakest individual in the group and let him go to test this thing (Sure by eating this thing).
If the rat died no one will approach this thing.
2) The second prove includes the intelligence and the co-operation characters:
If a rat is trapped, and the rat knew that it the end of his life, upon urination, there is a
an aromatic subustance that is secreted within the urine, to alert the others that this is a dangerous region and there have been a rat trapped here.
Believe it or not!!!!!!!!
Really, i am not joking but this the truth !!
Do you know that rat poisons are synthesized according to the first point? HOW!!
The DDT and all Rat poisons have been synthesized depending on the intelligence of the rats as they are now sure that the rats as i said in the second point are co-operative and can sacrifice themselves to get others safe, the scientists did a delayed action of these poisons. In other words, rather than the immediate death, there will be a delayed death. In brief, there will be no alerts that this thing is poisonous and there fore the rats will eat the poison and die in peace.
Of course there are others but this the most characteristic one

Answer 3

Although I personally bank on our fellow primates such as the Chimpanzee being the most intelligent overall - I'm surprised no-one has mentioned the kea, a New Zealand parrot.

Like chimps - the kea is social, playful, inquisitive and destructive, and as you can see from the video link, it does pretty well on animal intelligence tests. When I saw chimps in Africa - they threw green fruit at us and nearly broke my sister's finger - but my New Zealander friends have kea stories which indicate similar intelligence and disruption - apparently these birds enjoy letting the air out of car tyres for the fun of it, by unscrewing the cap and pressing the valve with their beak.

"Woah! That was fun.. let's do it again!"

I heard of a guy who trapped a kea in his campervan as a joke in the afternoon - and after he let it escape it came back for revenge with a friend, and the two birds spent the rest of the night using his windscreen as a slippery dip- while the occupants were trying to sleep.

Answer 4

Intelligence is a capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings. What most animals have is learned behaviour and not the ability to learn quickly - learning takes time in the animal world.

In scholarly testing the most intelligent creatures are mice and rats, birds (which have small brains but amazing ability to learn), and chimpanzees.

Wikipedia would have us believe dolphins are the next most intelligent, but you can discount that. Whales and pigs have proven to have more intelligence than dolphins.

Answer 5

Apart from humans, dolphins are usually regarded as the next most intelligent animal on the planet. I agree with some of the other answerers who cited the elephant and chimpanzee. A colony of ants has a formidable collective intelligence.

Answer 6

Elephants and chimpanzees are considered extremely intelligant. The chimps can perfom simple mathmatical eqations and can do things that humans can. It has been proven that chimps have the closest intelligance to that of a human =)

Answer 7

Humans get credit for inventing writing (but not language -- dolphins and chimps have languages of their own we haven't managed to decipher yet). With writing, one generation can build on the work of the ones before.

Of course I'm also a fan of jumping spiders....

Answer 8

Elephants are extremely intelligent. There are stories of elephants finding the bones of other elephants and picking them up, rearranging them and generally showing compassion for some of their kind who are passed on. Behaviour of this nature is an example of a limited form of sentience and self awareness, and thus, one of the foundations for society.

Answer 9

Skeeters, they live it to the fullest in 24 hours, sheer brilliance.

Answer 10

Monkeys. They are the closest reletive to mankind.