Some of the abilities of our smaller brothers make us not just wonder, but think hard.

Perhaps we only think that we are watching animals, but in reality they are looking down on us, and thinking to themselves, how stupid and narrow-minded these people are!

10. Proteins

Despite its small size and small brain volume, the squirrel's intelligence is approximately that of a two- or three-year-old child. These familiar little animals are not as simple as they seem, but this is due to their phenomenal memory! For the winter, a squirrel can make, just think, thousands of caches of supplies and remember them in spades, which is confirmed by experiments. In the animal’s head there is a real GPS map or GLONASS navigator, which even a person cannot boast of. After all, often we cannot find even keys or a mobile phone that were placed somewhere, but the squirrel remembers everything! The squirrel is extremely inventive! If she sees that a person has noticed where she hid the food, rest assured that when you leave, the animal will definitely hide everything! Scientists have proven that in wildlife proteins actively communicate with each other. They exchange information about food sources, including those that can be stolen from humans. The high intelligence of squirrels is also evidenced by their good learning ability. A tamed animal quickly remembers its nickname and readily responds to it.

9. Rats

This biological species has been living next to humans for many centuries and, largely thanks to this, has become wiser. Many people dislike these animals, and for good reason, since rats carry infections and create unsanitary conditions. Meanwhile, you can’t deny them high intelligence! These rodents are excellent masters of adaptation; they thrive in both hot India and cold Yakutia. In terms of spatial thinking, rats are at least as good as humans. In some incomprehensible way, they manage to accurately find a way out of the most complex labyrinths. In general, there are legends about the cunning of rats; it’s not without reason that they say “cunning as a rat”! Rodents form complexly organized societies with leaders, soldiers, scouts and other specialized individuals. Also, rats communicate with each other using ultrasound and dozens of types of calls, each of which has its own meaning. Scientists have proven that the rat is the only creature on Earth (except humans) that can laugh. Incredibly, these animals actually showed a specific reaction to funny situations!

8. Bees

Although, strictly speaking, bees are not animals, but insects, we still decided to include them in our rating, placing them in eighth place. Not only bees, but also ants and termites have so-called swarm intelligence or collective intelligence. Bees build an orderly hive, reminiscent of a human city, in which each of its inhabitants has its own useful function. For example, there are worker honey bees, as well as drones, whose duties include fertilizing the queen. The latter is busy only with laying eggs, which are looked after by special bees-educators. Surprisingly, all this very complex system works smoothly and reproduces itself, which is impossible without intelligence, albeit a collective one. Recent studies have shown that bees exchange information with each other by performing dances while in flight. Already, scientists are able to distinguish at least 60 individual dance words, but most likely there are many more. Not all mammals, which are generally considered the crown of evolution, have such a developed signaling system.

7. Pigs

Pigs are confidently one of the three most intelligent pets. In the wild, they are no less intelligent, and also very dangerous. It’s not for nothing that there is a saying among hunters: “If you’re going to hunt a bear, prepare a bed, if you’re going to hunt a wild boar, prepare a coffin.” The Pig has excellent analytical skills, and its sense of time is simply phenomenal. Animals on automated farms sense the approaching feeding time with an accuracy of one minute! But if you ask a person who does not have a watch what time it is, at best they will answer you with an accuracy of 10 minutes! Scientists have discovered the exceptional ingenuity of pigs when it comes to finding food. To do this, these animals use tricks that can easily deceive even humans. The high intelligence of pigs and quick learning allows them to perform in the circus and even play simple games. computer games using a patch and light signs. Animals have excellent long-term memory and an excellent sense of smell, which is particularly used to search for truffle mushrooms.

6. Crows

These birds are considered geniuses among birds, and in some manifestations of intelligence they are in no way inferior to higher primates. Crows have a well-developed logical thinking. American scientists managed to teach these birds to collect coins and throw them into a vending machine to get nuts for it. There was no need to teach them to crack nuts at all - any adult raven knows perfectly well that to do this it is enough to fly higher and release the nut from its paws above a hard surface. The memory of crows breaks all records. Students at the University of Washington caught several birds, measured them, weighed them, and released them. However, the birds did not forgive such treatment and for three months after that they chased students around the campus and shit on them as a whole flock. Moreover, those who did not take part in catching birds were never harmed! Crows learn quickly and, as adults, confidently use simple tools, such as a digging stick. Birds are fluent in theft techniques, using a complex strategy when one individual distracts attention, and the second steals food.

5. Cats

These animals owe much of their high intelligence to millennia of living together with humans. Thanks to people, domestic cats have mastered complex behavior patterns and even, oddly enough, learned to speak! Please note that cats communicate with each other by screaming and hissing, and with humans - with a variety of meows and purrs. A cat's tongue is extremely rich! English researcher Alexandra Sellers compiled a cat dictionary, which included more than 3,000 words spoken by Murks and Barsiks, each of which has a clear meaning. Cats are extremely inventive and cunning animals, in addition to being highly trainable. It is not without reason that in many circus performances the performance of cats is the highlight of the program. At the same time, a cat will never do anything it doesn’t want, which, out of ignorance, can be mistaken for dullness. In reality, this is a manifestation of a practical mind. In fact, if a person is forced to do something completely unnecessary for him, he will obviously exclaim, “I’m not a fool to do this”! A smart cat thinks something like this, which also speaks about the independence of her thinking.

4. Dogs

Dogs are confidently the leaders among all animals in terms of so-called social intelligence. By huddling in packs, dogs demonstrate miracles of self-organization. Each individual in such communities has its own specialization. For example, there are scout dogs, fighters, puppy trainers, elders and even healers who skillfully lick the wounds of their brothers. Of course, dogs communicate with each other by barking, growling and other information-filled sounds. It's hard to count how many words are in a dog's dictionary, but... we're talking about about thousands of concepts and shades of meaning, there is no doubt. The dog learns quickly, knows how to accumulate knowledge, and is familiar with the sense of justice. A dog's intelligence is most evident when interacting with a person. It is easy to teach a dog to count to ten, and the smartest four-legged animals understand up to 150 words in human languages, mostly in the form of commands. By the way, the smartest dog breeds are collies, German shepherds and, oddly enough, poodles.

3. Elephants

Brain size African elephant 4 times more than in humans and reach a mass of 5 kilograms. This is an absolute record among living creatures living on Earth. Scientists say that elephants are self-aware, so they can be considered partially intelligent. It is difficult to argue with this statement, because elephants, just like people, can experience grief, joy, compassion and fun. An undoubted indicator of the highest intelligence of elephants is their ability to altruism, that is, behavior that does not bring immediate benefit, but justifies itself in the long term at the level of a large population. It is widely known that elephants in the wild observe funeral rituals. They cover their fallen brothers with plants and gather around the bodies to honor the memory of the departed elephants. These animals have a phenomenal memory - they can remember for the rest of their lives (and they live up to 70 years) people who have done them harm or, on the contrary, acted kindly. Elephants, like people, have humor, ingenuity, and even an understanding of abstract things. In India, as well as Africa, there is a thriving business selling paintings of elephants' trunks to tourists.

2. Monkeys

The honorable second place in our ranking is occupied by monkeys, namely chimpanzees and orangutans. They are so smart that their IQ is measured according to human parameters. The most advanced monkeys raised by humans have an IQ of 70, which corresponds to the level of a student junior classes. Moreover, the genetic makeup of chimpanzees is 98% identical to that of humans. In wild nature great apes communicate using sounds, words and sign language. They make extensive use of tools, such as flat stones for cracking nuts and digging sticks. Chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas live in packs with clear specialization of community members. Like people, packs of monkeys wage wars among themselves over food plots, and also exchange brides and grooms to avoid degeneration. However, the real surprise is caused by monkeys raised by humans. For example, a chimpanzee named Kanzi, trained by scientists at the University of Georgia, understood at least 3,000 English words. And he could use about 500 words by pressing the keys of a special device. There is no doubt - if it were not for man, then in a few hundred thousand years a civilization of monkeys would almost certainly appear on Earth!

1. Dolphins

And the first line of our top is confidently occupied by dolphins, who are most likely intelligent. They communicate with each other using ultrasonic signals-words, of which at least 14,000 have already been identified. And now attention! Lexicon the average person is only 8,000 words, that is, almost half as much! But that's something else! Dolphins are also ahead of humans in terms of physiological parameters of the brain. The human thinking organ weighs on average 1400 grams, and the mass of a dolphin's brain is 1700 grams. Moreover, it’s a shame, but a dolphin’s brain has much more convolutions! To be fair, the dolphin is potentially smarter than a person. But why then do we catch them in a net and force them to perform in the circus, and not they us? The dolphin's problem is the lack of arms, or rather, palms with fingers that can do delicate work. In addition, in the process of evolution, dolphins did not have to survive hard, competing with others biological species, since in the sea they are at the very top of the food chain. Man had to fight fiercely for a place in the Sun, using his main advantage over others - his intellect and hands to boot. As a result, we learned to write, build cities and create various mechanisms. Thus, dolphins are not inferior to humans in intelligence and are even ahead of us in certain parameters. Without a doubt, they have self-awareness and understanding of abstract phenomena, but in the absence of technical civilization, they remain, albeit the most intelligent, animals.

We humans think that we are the smartest. We have Difficult language, we know how to build skyscrapers and museums in which we exhibit our achievements. The wrong side of our intelligence is the invention of bombs, but let’s not talk about sad things today. However, the more we learn about the animal world, the better we understand that our neighbors on the planet are also very, very not stupid.

The thinking abilities of chimpanzees and other primates have long been appreciated, but there are many “Einsteins” among other representatives of the fauna.

Pigs are perhaps the smartest pets on the planet. In terms of intelligence, they can be compared with cats and dogs, but in their ability to solve complex problems they are noticeably superior to balls and badgers. Thus, pigs easily understand how a mirror works, and even more than that, they begin to study the reflected reality for food. So far, researchers can't say whether pigs understand that they see themselves in the mirror, or whether they can be put on the same level as monkeys, dolphins and other species that have successfully passed the self-identification test.

Back in the 1990s, researchers conducted the following experiment. The pigs were taught how to move a cursor on the screen and were shown some doodles. After that, the pigs were given a task: to move the cursor to the scribbles that they saw for the first time. And what do you think? The pigs completed the test as quickly as the chimpanzees.

Octopuses

If pigs are the smartest of pets, then octopuses are geniuses among invertebrates. Finding a way out of the maze and solving a couple of puzzles is not difficult for them: octopuses have both short-term and long-term memory. Octopuses can open jars, squeeze into narrow openings, and “run” from cell to cell for food. They can also be trained to recognize different geometric figures and patterns.

On top of that, octopuses can play - and this is one of the signs of highly developed intelligence. Researchers have noticed how octopuses let out plastic bottles or toys into the flow of an artificially created current in their aquariums, and then catch them. Octopuses can also wisely use what others see as garbage: having received fragments of coconut shells, octopuses build a shelter from them.

In many fairy tales, crows appear as cunning deceivers, and their real image is not very different from the fictional one. Crows can use tools, set up hiding places, and make predictions for the future based on their life experiences. For example, New Caledonian crows use twigs as forks to get a bug or larva from under the bark of a tree, and they throw hard-shelled nuts onto the roadway so that the wheels of cars crush them.

Australian crows have learned to eat poisonous cane toads without risk to health: they turn the prey on its back and kill it with a blow to the throat with its beak, where the poisonous skin is very thin and where it is easier to get to the edible tripe. Recent studies have shown that crows can recognize a person's face and even remember faces for several years. So be careful: who knows how the crow will take revenge on you, whom you once accidentally or deliberately offended.

Dolphins

Dolphins, like people, live social life and have their own language, so complex that people have only now learned to partially understand it. Female dolphins take care of their children for several years after their birth, teaching them all the intricacies of existence in dolphin society. Recent experiments with dolphins have shown that these animals have an understanding of numbers and are also self-aware, a trait found only in the smartest mammals.

In 2005, scientists observed a group of Pacific bottlenose dolphins while searching for food. Bottlenose dolphins have shown themselves to be real inventors: in order not to get hurt when turning over stones seabed, they tore off pieces of sea sponge and wrapped it around their delicate nose.

The biggest land mammals live in close-knit communities with complex social hierarchy. Elephants are inherently altruistic towards other animals, and pregnant females know which leaves they need to chew to stimulate labor.

Elephants know how to use tools and quickly navigate in an unfamiliar situation - for example, they throw stones at a fence made of live wire until it breaks, or they damage the wires to free themselves from captivity, while the giants can coordinate their actions. However, what really sets elephants a step above all other mammals are their complex post-mortem rituals. Elephants and Neanderthals are the only living creatures other than humans that pay respect to the dead, for example by visiting their graves.

A huge number of beautiful animals live on our planet. Scientists and specialists have been trying for a long time to determine who is the smartest among them? .

10th place: Rats

Yes, yes, we were not mistaken. Usually, when you hear the word “rat,” the image of a gray, unpleasant creature with a long tail immediately appears. In criminal jargon, a “rat” is a person who steals from his own people. But read the next few paragraphs and perhaps you will change your mind about these very smart animals.

They are always where we are. They feed on what we left behind. We may not even notice them, but they are here and building their dark kingdoms right under our feet. They are found on every continent except Antarctica. And they are not going anywhere. This is a well-oiled machine for conquering the world.

It has long been known that rats are among the most intelligent animals. As an example, let’s give a story from the head of one of the branches of the famous Moscow Eliseevsky store, Larisa Darkova.

It all started with the fact that rats managed to steal eggs without breaking them. For a long time surveillance was carried out, unnoticed by these gray rodents, in the basements of Eliseevsky. And this is what turned out. “In order not to damage the fragile shell,” says Larisa Darkova, “these clever people came up with the following: one rat lies on its back and rolls a chicken egg with its muzzle into the hollow formed on its stomach. At this time, another “accomplice” grabs her by the tail, and thus they drag the egg into the hole.”

Humanity has been waging war against rats for centuries, but we cannot win. Some biologists are confident that gray rats have a collective mind that controls the actions of each individual individual. This hypothesis explains a lot: the speed with which gray rodents dealt with other species, and the success in their fight against people.

It is the collective mind that helps rats avoid inevitable death. The well-known phrase “rats fleeing a sinking ship” has behind it numerous officially recorded cases of rats leaving doomed ships in advance. Another example is earthquakes, which, according to scientists, cannot be accurately predicted. And the rats simply leave the city a day or two before tremors that could destroy buildings. Perhaps the rat hivemind is able to see the future better than us humans.

Rats have a clear hierarchy. In addition to the leader and subordinates, there are also so-called “scouts” in rat society. Thanks to this, all the efforts of mankind in inventing ingenious mousetraps and rat poisons are coming to naught. The “suicide bombers” “appointed” by the leader go on reconnaissance and try poisoned baits. Having received the SOS signal, the remaining members of the rat pack stop paying attention to poisonous products. And the “kamikazes” sit in their holes and drink water, trying to wash out their stomachs. The same is true with traps. If rats notice their relative in a trap, the flock will immediately leave the dangerous place.

The whole point is that, unlike a person, a rat never steps on the same rake twice, and therefore it is practically indestructible.

We may hate these gray rodents, but when you recognize their abilities, a feeling of respect automatically arises. The rat is a true superorganism, capable of living and thriving in almost any environment, the vitality of which has been developed over 50 million years.

They perfectly climb almost any surface, pipes and trees, can climb steep brick walls, crawl into a hole the size of a five-ruble coin, run at speeds of up to 10 km/h, swim and dive well (there is a known case when a rat swam 29 kilometers) .

When biting, a rat's teeth develop a pressure of 500 kg/sq.cm. This is enough to chew through the bars of the grill. A wild rat in an aggressive state can jump to a height of up to 2 meters. Rats can survive in absolutely extreme conditions, in which other animals would probably die. So, these, in general, heat-loving animals can live in refrigerators at a temperature of minus 17 degrees and even reproduce.

Rats, these practically invisible, nimble and intelligent creatures, are not afraid of the clumsy bipedal man, who over many millennia of war has not come up with anything smarter than a simple mousetrap.

9th place: Octopus

No. 9 on our list of the smartest animals is octopus is one of the smartest sea ​​creatures . They can play, recognize different shapes and patterns (such as colored light bulbs), solve puzzles, navigate mazes, and have short-term and long-term memory. As a sign of respect for the intelligence of octopuses, some countries in the world have even passed laws requiring the use of anesthesia before performing operations on them.

Octopuses are invertebrates, and the closest species to them are squid and cuttlefish. In total, there are more than 200 species of different octopuses in the world that inhabit the seas and oceans of the Earth.

Octopuses are skilled hunters, acting from ambush. Open battle is not for them. This attack tactic also serves as a defense for the octopus itself. If necessary, the octopus throws out a cloud of ink, which disorients the predator attacking it. Octopus ink not only allows the owner to hide from sight, but also temporarily deprives the predator of its sense of smell. Maximum speed The octopus's movement is just over 30 km/h, but they can maintain this pace for a very short period of time.

Octopuses are very curious, which is usually associated with intelligence. In nature, they sometimes build their shelter houses from stones - this also indicates a certain intellectual level.

However, octopuses cannot realize that glass is transparent. This is proven by the following simple experiment: we give the octopus a treat in the form of his favorite crab, but in a “package” - a glass cylinder without a top lid. He can continue for a very long time in fruitless attempts to get food, knocking his body against the walls of a transparent vessel, although all he had to do was climb 30 centimeters along the glass, and he would freely penetrate through the open top of the cylinder to the crab. But it is enough for his tentacle to accidentally jump over the top edge of the glass vessel once, and he develops a conditioned reflex. Just one successful attempt is enough, and now the octopus knows exactly how to get the crab from behind the glass.

Octopus tentacles perform irreplaceable functions:

• they crawl on tentacles along the bottom;
• carry heavy loads;
• build nests with tentacles;
• open shellfish shells;
• attach their eggs to stones;
• They also perform guard duty.

The upper pair of hands is intended for feeling and examining surrounding objects. Octopuses use longer tentacles as attack weapons. When attacking prey or defending against an enemy, they try to grab the enemy with them. In “peaceful” times, “combat” arms turn into legs and serve as stilts when moving along the bottom.

The development of organs in animals that they can use as simple tools leads to the formation of a more complex brain.

Various experiments show that octopuses have excellent memory. And the “intelligence” of an animal is primarily determined by the ability of its brain to remember experiences. When everything is in order with memory, the next step is intelligence, which helps to draw conclusions from the experience gained.

Over the past 10 years, the most advanced experiments on the behavior of octopuses have been carried out at the marine station in Naples. Scientists have found that Octopuses are trainable. They They can distinguish geometric shapes just as well as elephants and dogs. - small square from a larger one, a rectangle shown vertically and horizontally, a white circle from a black one, a cross and a square, a diamond and a triangle. For making the right choice, the octopuses were given goodies; for a mistake, they received a weak electric shock.

Octopuses are easily hypnotized, which indicates a fairly high organization of his brain. One of the methods of hypnosis is to hold an octopus in the palm of your hand for some time with its mouth up, the tentacles should hang down. When an octopus is hypnotized, you can do whatever you want with it - it does not wake up. You can even throw it, and it will fall lifeless, like a piece of rope.

These intelligent marine animals are still poorly understood, but scientists are constantly discovering new and impressive abilities of octopuses.

8th place: Dove

Pigeons in large quantities can be found in all major cities, and most of us consider these birds to be “bad” creatures that get under our feet. But numerous scientific experiments show that these are very smart birds. For example, pigeons can remember and recognize hundreds of different images over many years.

The most common and well-known pigeon is the rock pigeon (lat. columba livia) - a bird whose homeland is considered to be Europe. A group of scientists from the Japanese Keio University showed through experiments that rock pigeons are able to recognize themselves in the mirror better than small children. Before these studies, it was believed that only humans, primates, dolphins and elephants had such abilities.

The experiments were carried out as follows. The pigeons were shown 3 videos simultaneously. The first video showed them in real time (i.e. a mirror), the second showed their movements a few seconds ago, and the third was recorded several hours before the present moment. The birds made a choice with their beaks, pointing in a certain direction. According to the results of these tests, it turned out that pigeons remember their actions with a delay of up to 5-7 seconds.

Pigeons can be trained to perform a sequence of movements and distinguish between two objects with small differences - quite impressive for a simple pest.

In Tsarist Russia, pigeons were valued no less than large farm animals. Noble families bred their own breeds of pigeons, and these birds were a source of special pride and were passed on through generations.

The useful skills of pigeons have always been valued. For example, these birds' ability to find their way home and fly quickly made it possible to use them to transmit mail.

7th place: Belka

This nimble animal has a brain the size of a large pea. However, research shows that squirrels have excellent spatial orientation, have extraordinary intelligence and phenomenal memory, and can think and analyze.

Thanks to their intelligence and ability to survive, squirrels can be found everywhere. They have penetrated almost every corner of the globe. Squirrels are everywhere. From alpine marmots on snowy mountain peaks to squirrels living in the hot Kalahari Desert in South Africa. Subterranean squirrels - prairie dogs and chipmunks - have entered the underground space. Squirrels have penetrated all cities. AND The most famous of the squirrels is the gray one.

One of the widely known distinctive features protein is their ability to store nuts for the winter. Squirrels do not hibernate and must find up to 3,000 hidden nuts to survive. They bury some types of nuts in the ground, others hide them in tree hollows. This work requires incredible effort.

Thanks to their phenomenal memory, squirrels can remember the location of a nut 2 months after they buried it. Fantastic! Try hiding 3,000 coins. We guarantee that in a month you will be able to find only the one that is in your wallet.

Squirrels also have their own thieves, who decide not to get nuts, but wait and watch from ambush until other squirrels begin burying their winter food. But for every action there is a counteraction. If the squirrel notices that they are starting to follow it, it pretends to bury the food. While the thief is wasting time on the empty hole, the squirrel moves his nut to another, more secret place. Isn't this the best proof that squirrels have intelligence?

Planning and remembering the correct route to food is vital. Brain and memory test: At the top of the wall there are 2 round holes, both with doors that open in one direction. One leads to a dead end that will force the squirrel to start over, and the twisted tube - a more difficult path - leads to nuts. Question: Will the squirrel choose the right hole?

Research shows that squirrels have excellent spatial orientation, and even from the ground they can see which hole leads to the nuts. Squirrels without hesitation fit into the desired hole leading to food.

The ability to pave the way, dexterity, phenomenal ingenuity, spatial orientation and lightning speed - this is the secret of the success of squirrels on our planet.

Very often, squirrels are considered pests. After all, they chew everything they can and cannot.

6th place: Pigs

Despite their reputation as gluttonous and always dirty creatures (they will find dirt anywhere), pigs are actually very intelligent animals. Whether domestic or wild, pigs are known for their ability to adapt to different environmental conditions.

American zoologist E. Menzel believes that in terms of the development of their own language, pigs occupy second place among animals after monkeys. Pigs respond well to music, for example, they can grunt to the beat of the melody.

Thanks to high intelligence pigs are highly stressed. Piglets are very attached to their mothers, and if they are separated, especially in early age, they experience this very painfully: the piglet does not eat well and loses a lot of weight.

The greatest stress for pigs is moving from one place to another. It is not for nothing that Academician Pavlov stated that the pig is the most nervous of the animals surrounding humans.

Some scientists claim that a pig's intelligence is approximately matches the intelligence of a three year old child. In terms of learning ability, pigs are at least at the level of cats and dogs, and often surpass them. Even Charles Darwin believed that pigs were at least as intelligent as dogs.

Conducted various intelligence tests among the pigs. In one test, the feeder was connected to a computer. A cursor was displayed on the monitor screen, which could be moved using a joystick. Also, a special area was shown on the monitor: if you hit it with the cursor, the feeder automatically opens and food pours out. Amazingly, the pigs were excellent at controlling the joystick and moved the cursor to the right place! Dogs cannot repeat this experiment and are inferior to pigs in intelligence.

Pigs have a fantastic sense of smell! They are, for example, used as truffle finders - underground mushrooms - in France. Pigs were used to find mines during the war; trained sniffer pigs easily cope with the search for various drugs.

In terms of blood composition, digestive physiology and some other physiological characteristics, pigs are very close to humans. Only monkeys are closer. That is why donor material taken from pigs is often used in transplantology. Many pig organs are used directly or indirectly in treatment dangerous diseases humans, and their gastric juice is used in the manufacture of insulin. A pig often suffers from the same diseases as a person, and it can be treated with almost the same drugs in the same doses.

5th place: Crows

Crows are incredibly intelligent animals. Scientists believe that their analytical thinking abilities are on par with those of great apes.

Crows are extremely adaptive and are exceptionally adapted to living around humans. Our actions force them to adapt in new ways every time. Crows don't survive with us, they thrive. They are found everywhere on the planet except Antarctica and parts South America. And throughout the entire territory you are unlikely to meet crows further than 5 km from a human dwelling.

We are finding more and more evidence that crows are very, very smart. Their brain size is the same proportion as that of a chimpanzee. There are many examples of various manifestations of their intelligence.

understands better than many people, which means red and green lights when crossing the street. Crows living in the city collect nuts from trees and place them on the roadway under the wheels of passing cars to open the shells. Then they wait patiently, waiting for the necessary light, return to the road and take their shelled nuts. An impressive example of innovation in the animal kingdom! The important thing is not that the crows learned to do this, but something else is important. This method was first observed in crows about 12 years ago in Tokyo. After this, all the crows in the area adopted this method. Crows learn from each other - that's a fact!

Another incredible study was carried out with a crow from New Caledonia. On this island, crows use twigs to pick insects from the bark of trees. In the experiment, a crow tried to get a piece of meat from a narrow glass tube. But the crow was given not the usual stick, but a piece of wire. She had never had to deal with this kind of material before. In front of the amazed researchers, the crow independently bent the wire into a hook using its paws and beak, and then took out the bait with this device. At this moment, the experimenters fell into ecstasy! But tool use is one of the highest forms of animal behavior, indicating their ability for intelligent activity.

Another example from Sweden. Researchers noticed that crows wait for fishermen to cast their fishing rods into the water, and when they move away, the crows fly in, reel in the fishing rod and eat the fish that was bait.

We can talk endlessly about the intelligence of crows. These observations were made at the University of Washington and indicate crows have amazing memory. Here the researchers had to catch a pair of crows flying around the area. The students went out, caught the birds with a net, measured them, weighed them, and then released them back. And they could not forgive such an attitude towards themselves! Subsequently, the crows flew up to those students as they walked across campus and shit on them, flew around in a flock, in short, ruined their lives in every possible way. This went on for a week. Then this continued for a month. And after the summer holidays...

Author Joshua Klein has been studying crows for more than 10 years. To confirm the presence of intelligence in these birds, he decided to conduct a rather complex experiment. Long story short, he created a special vending machine and placed it in a field with coins scattered around it. The machine was filled with nuts, and to get them, you need to throw a coin into a special slot. Surprisingly, the crows figured out this task quite quickly, picked up the coins, dropped them into the slot and received nuts.

We know a lot about the species that are disappearing from the planet as a result of human habitat expansion, but no one pays attention to the species that are alive and thriving. In Moscow alone there are about 1 million crows. These smartest representatives of birds have perfectly adapted to the human environment.

4th place: Elephant

These are not just lumbering giants with big ears and good memories. The philosopher Aristotle once said that the elephant is “an animal that excels others in wit and intelligence.”

With a mass of over 5 kg, the elephant's brain is larger than that of any other land animal, but small compared to the total body mass: only ~0.2% (chimpanzees - 0.8%, humans - about 2%). Based on this, one might think that elephants are quite stupid animals. But the evidence suggests that relative brain size may not be an accurate measure of intelligence.

Elephants are animals that are good know how to show their emotions, both positive and negative. Their “facial expressions” consist of movements of the head, ears and trunk, with which the elephant can express all sorts of, often subtle, shades of good or bad mood.

Elephants are extremely caring and sensitive to other members of their group, as well as other species, which is considered a very advanced form of intelligence. For example, elephants feel very deeply the loss of someone from the herd. They can gather near a dead body for several days. There have been recorded cases of “funerals” when elephants covered their dead comrades with a layer of vegetation.

Elephants incredibly good memory. Elephants remember a person who treated them well or badly all their lives. There are many examples when the owner offended the elephant, and only years later the elephant took revenge on him, and sometimes even killed him.

As we already know, use of tools animals directly points to capacity for intelligent activity. To determine this, the following studies were conducted at the Washington Zoo. In the elephant enclosure, fruits and young bamboo shoots were hung high on a tree. The animals, standing on the ground, could not reach them even with their trunks. Not far from this place, the researchers placed a cube-shaped stand and began to observe...

At first, the elephant simply moved the cube around the enclosure, and in fairness it should be noted that he did not immediately figure out what to do: the experiment had to be repeated 7 times. And suddenly inspiration descended on the elephant: he got up, went straight to the cube, pushed it to the place where the treat was hanging and, standing on it with his front legs, took it out with his trunk. After that, even when the cube was out of reach, the elephant used other objects - car tire and a big ball.

Elephants are believed to have good ear for music and musical memory, and are also able to distinguish melodies from three notes. In general, these huge animals are amazing artists. They are also well known for their ability to draw on the ground while holding a stick with their trunk. In Thailand, they even made an attraction where several Thai elephants painted abstract drawings in front of spectators. True, it is unknown whether the elephants actually understood what they were doing.

3rd place: Orangutans

Apes are considered the most intelligent creatures on Earth after humans. Of course, people are biased in this matter, but the mental capabilities of great apes are difficult to deny. So, In 3rd place on the list of the smartest animals is the orangutan. or “forest man” (orang - “man”, hutan - “forest”).

They have a high culture and strong social ties. Females stay with their children for many years, teaching them everything they need to survive in the forest. For example, orangutans cleverly use leaves as umbrellas from the rain, or remember places where different time years the trees bear fruit. By the age of 10 years, an orangutan can taste and identify more than 200 species of different edible plants.

Great apes, such as chimpanzees and orangutans, are able to recognize themselves in the mirror, while most animals react to their image in the mirror as if they were another individual.

How more people observes animals, studies their behavior, learning abilities, the more clearly he realizes that they possess elements of intelligence. It would be more correct to say elementary thinking or its rudiments. Numerous experiments were aimed at studying the level of intelligence of various animals throughout the 20th century. Nowadays, scientists are returning to this issue again.

What pets are called the smartest today?

In 1st place is the dog.

They have always been considered the smartest among domestic animals. It turned out that these animals are much smarter than we imagine. The results of a study by American professor S. Koren, presented at the annual congress of psychologists, are amazing. He claims:

Dogs are able to remember and distinguish about 165 different signals, signs and words of human speech.

Most of them clearly understand that 1 + 1 = 2, not 3 or 4.

If a person points his finger at something, the wolf will look at the finger, and the dog will look in the direction indicated.
They remember events and sensory experiences associated with a specific person for a long time.

They can distinguish between photographs of landscapes and photographs of dogs.

And it’s unnecessary to talk about the fact that they are devoted and irreplaceable helpers for humans. The abilities of animals of different breeds differ greatly. Poodles, border collies, German shepherds, and Rottweilers are considered the most intelligent.

In 2nd place is a pig

The learning ability of pigs is no worse than that of dogs. By the way, Charles Darwin also claimed this.

In one experiment, pigs were given a test of intelligence. The feeder was connected to a computer. A figure was brightly displayed on the monitor. It was necessary to control the joystick and place the cursor on this figure. Only in this case the feeder will open automatically.

Incredible! The pigs controlled the joystick with their little snout and moved the cursor exactly to the figure.

By the way, the dogs failed to cope with this task. They lost the competition of wits.

Pigs have a phenomenal sense of smell. With their help, the French find truffles (underground mushrooms). Specially trained piglets are used to search for drugs.

Pigs have a great sense of musical rhythm and, without being out of tune, grunt to the beat of the melody.

In 3rd place is a sheep

Thanks to experiments by scientists, it was found that sheep have developed ingenuity and insight. They remember people's faces and the appearance of other animals well. Their adaptation to changing circumstances is phenomenal. Sheep are able to quickly perceive and retain information in memory for a long time.

It is impossible to determine exactly how much smarter one animal is than another; IQ tests for animals have not yet been invented :) But it is definitely possible to make a reliable list of the smartest animals, without trying to claim that some of them are smarter and some are dumber .

So, let's list all the animals that are in the top ten smartest. If anyone disagrees, or has something to say, please contribute to the discussion) Meet the smartest animals

Primates

The primate family includes humans, as well as chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, baboons, gibbons and monkeys. These animals, excluding humans, occupy the top six spots on biologist Edward Wilson's list of the ten most intelligent animals; in first place - chimpanzees).

Primates have large, complex brains, they can build complex cultures, and they have some degree of control over their environment. They can communicate with animals of their own species and have developed certain language skills.

Elephants.

Dolphin intelligence

There is an opinion that they are dolphins. When dolphins began to be studied and trained in the middle of the last century, the first results of this work seemed so unusual, and even surprising (they talked about it a lot, wrote about it and made films) that a legend gradually developed about the unusually high intelligence of dolphins; one could often hear that they were no more stupid than a person, only their minds were different. The brain of an adult dolphin weighs about 1,700 grams, while that of a human weighs 1,400. A dolphin has twice as many convolutions in the cerebral cortex. At the same time, there are relatively few neurons per cubic millimeter of its substance (less than in the brain of primates). The results of studies on the behavior and physiology of the brain of dolphins are very contradictory. Some put their ability to learn at about the level of a dog and show that dolphins are very far from chimpanzees. Research on the communication methods of dolphins, on the contrary, leads to the conclusion that we have not yet come close to understanding this form of life in natural conditions and comparing the level of intelligence of dolphins and chimpanzees is simply incorrect. One property of the dolphin brain is completely unique: it never really sleeps. They sleep - alternately - then left, then right hemisphere brain The dolphin needs to come to the surface from time to time to breathe. At night, the waking halves of the brain are responsible for this in turn. It is known that British intelligence used dolphins as saboteurs during the war.

Dogs.

The dog is an omnivorous mammal from the canine family, domesticated more than 10 thousand years ago. Dogs are able to understand 250 words and gestures, count to five, and also perform simple mathematical operations.

Dog best friend person, always nearby, always giving a paw and wagging his tail). It is worth mentioning that the smartest dog breed is the poodle.

Cats

Cats are one of the smartest animals

A friend of mine had a cat, and it was a very clean one. And they taught him to go to the toilet, but not just to go, but also to flush himself! It took a long time to adjust the button to make it move smoothly.
And one day the owner noticed that the cat, who had come in to do his business, did not come out for a long time. Looking into the toilet, she was shocked.
The cat (for half an hour) pressed the drain with his paw, listened and pressed again.
THE COLD WATER WAS TURNED OFF THAT EVENING!!!

Rats

Mice and rats, previously used only as experimental animals, are now gaining increasing popularity as pets, especially among young people. Therefore, these animals are increasingly becoming patients in veterinary clinics.

Rats are very smart animals (among the 10 smartest animals) with a life expectancy of 2.5-3 years.

You should never harm a rat or its offspring. They are vindictive. Their urine may contain certain elements that can harm humans. But only when it is released is when the rat takes revenge. Rats catch waves. This can be observed when they look intently at one point and their head moves to different sides(left, right)).Rats are very playful, they love to frolic with their owner. They are very active, but tend to be more active at night.

Crow

Raven is an avian genius, the smartest bird. A virtuoso in terms of theft, he steals everything that is bad and not very bad. Crows are not only petty thieves, but also kidnappers of chicks. They often gather in flocks in order to take possession of prey that is inaccessible to each bird individually. For example, one crow teases a poor bird, while another one steals the egg right from under it, and if the birds are weak, then the kidnapper simply throws them out of the nest. The crow is well acquainted with gravity. When she fails to break a shell or nut with her beak, she rises into the sky and throws them onto a hard surface (stone, asphalt). This also means that the feathered geniuses are well versed in the properties of the soil and can distinguish soft sand from stone. Crows can also count to five, but individuals of this species have problems with further counting. Crows build nests in the spring, and then they drag everything that glitters there. There you can find medallions, gold-plated items, and copper wire. There was a case when an avian genius furnished his home with the manuscript of a dissertation. Crows make nests from dry branches, wool, grass, rags; a male and a female take part in this important task. Typically, a crow's clutch contains four to five eggs, colored bluish-green.

Crow chicks easily become tame and when interacting with humans, they increase their level of intelligence. They can take off a guest's hat and bring a fork or spoon to the table. The owner of a tame crow needs to hide valuables very well, since it is almost impossible to wean this bird from stealing.

Squirrels

Squirrels are considered smart animals; in populated areas they are able to feed from bird feeders, dig up planted plants in search of seeds and settle in rooms such as attics.

Squirrels can be trained for hand feeding. Since they are designed to hide excess food, they will take from you as much as you offer. If a person begins to feed a squirrel, it will return to him in a day for a new portion. Squirrels living in parks and gardens within the city have long learned that humans are a source of food.

These red animals are smarter than many people think. Scientists in laboratory conditions tried to take away food from squirrels. And, I must say, we encountered desperate resistance from the tailed ones. This characterizes squirrels as animals that know how to stand up for themselves and their “property.” Unfortunately this valuable quality This is not common to all “reasonable people.”

Pig

Like many other animal species, pigs have an excellent sense of time. This is especially evident before feeding: literally a few minutes before it, the animals begin to worry and look in the direction of the appearance of the feed dispenser. Paradoxically, the “intelligence” of these animals sometimes serves as a brake on the successful development of pig breeding. Animals living on farms do not like deviations from the established order. Even clapping your hands causes an immediate reaction from piglets throughout the pigsty - the animals immediately refuse food, become wary and seem to freeze in anticipation of something unknown and scary. Only some animals begin to engage in the same activity after 30 - 40 seconds, and the majority experience anxiety for another 2 - 3 minutes. It is no coincidence that the winner Nobel Prize Academician I.P. Pavlov noted that “the most nervous animal around us is the pig.”

Octopuses

The octopus leads a bottom-dwelling lifestyle, living among stones, rocks and algae. On Far East The favorite hiding place of its juveniles is the empty shells of the sea scallop. During the day it is less active than at night, so it is considered a nocturnal animal. Timid, when a diver or scuba diver approaches, he usually hides under stones. He keeps his home clean: he sweeps it with a stream of water from a funnel, and puts scraps outside in a garbage heap. It drags into the hole everything it finds at the bottom: the main thing is that the entrance is narrow and wide inside. It even lives in boxes, cans, tires and rubber boots. When enemies approach, it flees, hiding in rock crevices and under stones. Octopuses have a protective device - autotomy: a tentacle grabbed by an enemy can come off due to strong contraction of the muscles, which in this case tear themselves apart. The most “smart” among all invertebrates: amenable to training, has good memory, distinguishes geometric shapes - a small square is distinguished from a larger one, a rectangle placed vertically from a rectangle placed horizontally, a circle from a square, a rhombus from a triangle. Recognizes people, gets used to those who feed them. If you spend enough time with an octopus, it becomes tame. We train well. It winters in deeper waters and moves to shallow waters in the summer.

At the beginning of the 19th century, a ship carrying expensive Korean porcelain sank off the coast of Japan. The entire cargo ended up at the bottom, and at such a depth that the divers could not reach it. Almost a hundred years later, a fisherman came up with the idea of ​​using octopuses to lift porcelain from the bottom. Ropes were tied to the octopuses and lowered. After a short period of time, when the octopus found refuge in one of the vases, the rope was pulled. The octopus tenaciously grabbed onto what it considered its shelter, and it, along with its cargo, was lifted up.