Animal Intelligence Sometimes animals do some very strange things. When I say animals I am including insects, fish and so on. Hammerhead sharks in French Polynesia have decided to do something very strange and that is gather under the full moon. It must be a creepy sight to see hundreds of them there. I was looking at a television program the other day which showed a forest where one of the trees seemed to shimmer. It turned out bees were covering the entire tree trunk and they had a great defense mechanism. If anything would approach them like a wasp which their stinger was defenseless against, they would all surround the offender in an incredible ball of bees creating so much heat the wasp would fry to death. It is not only humans that have some bad habits. A lemur was seen doing something very uncharacteristic which was picking its nose. Perhaps something crawled up there and it was just trying to get it out, or it has developed a disgusting habit? A seal was sitting on an iceberg when a group of killer whales decided on a way to catch it. Their cunning moves were very surprising because they took a lot of tactical thought. They somehow all decided they would make big waves washing the seal off the iceberg. That is how this poor seal met its doom. Elephants have a very strange reaction to death. It seems they hold a sort of funeral when one is found dead. They gather around it and lay their trunks over the dead animal and then cover it with leaves and other jungle fauna and sometimes even stand guard over the body for a while. I think I have to mention gorillas learning sign language. Does it seem to you there is something wrong with this and maybe talking and understanding makes them learn about things they never would have like death? Who is to say what a gorilla really knows who doesn’t have sign language? I remember when Koko the gorilla was asked what death was and she said being put into a warm hole. Did she realize what death really meant? There is no doubt gorillas turned out to be a lot smarter than we first thought. It is believed that Dolphins can communicate with each other and could be the smartest animals on earth. For decades scientists have been trying to figure out if dolphins actually use a language and what they are saying. There are many stories of dolphins saving drowning humans. For some reason they seem to have empathy towards us. They know when they are looking at their reflection what it is. One animal which is uncanny smart is the octopus. I love this story so I am going to tell it again. There was an octopus in an aquarium which sat in a tank watching people come and go, but it was also looking at a drain across the room. It studied the drain for days until one night when the aquarium was closed to the public, it climbed out of the water, walked across the room, got into the drain somehow, and went from the drain into the ocean. This feat of intelligence must have shocked those aquarium owners. Are we giving octopi enough credit for their smarts? A honey badger was locked into a compound along with its mate. The enclosure consisted of a chain-linked thick fence with a gate with two sliding bolt locks, one above the other both out of reach. The two honey badgers walked over to the gate, the female on the bottom and the male climbed up on her and slid the first bolt open. Then the female climbed up the fence and slid the second bolt lock open. How did they know to do this? The male pulled the gate open and waited for the female and then they escaped. It turned out honey badgers are some of the smartest animals on earth. That was not the end of the story. They got caught and the owner of the property built a smooth walled enclosure to keep them in and it was high. The badgers surveyed the wall and started to pile up rocks to stand on to get to the top and all the rocks had to be removed. The next thing they did was look for tree limbs to stand up so they could use them to climb over the wall and even tires that were in the enclosure. These animals really know what they want and figure out how to do it. There is a chimp which lives in a lab in Japan which is a wiz at memory tasks. When 9 numbers are shown to him he can remember the numbers and put them back into the proper places. He has been challenged by humans at the game and has beaten them all. The name of the chimp is Ayumu. Chimps can be very dangerous at times and are so strong they can rip off human arms and legs. One of the animal acts which has surprised people is 2 week old piglets can learn their names. This seems odd, but we have to remember the fact many animals are born with the knowledge of how to walk, while human babies are quite helpless for much longer. Scientists claim raccoons are far smarter than we suspect. They can pick a lock and recognize some devices. They also have great memories and remember the solutions to puzzles for up to three years. Many people believe if we were to match a raccoon against a dog, the raccoon would prove to be smarter. Crows are so smart they have been known to change migration patterns to go around farms where crows have been killed before. They can remember faces and when they see someone who killed or injured a crow they will scream at them. They are famous for creating tools to use to get to food. Finally, even though crows have smaller brains than some dogs, they are claimed to be much smarter. All this leads me to wonder about something. When we begin to explore other planets and finally find life, will we find alien animals which are smarter than us? How will we know the difference between super smart alien animals and the alien beings? Could there be alien life which is considered to be animal life which has technology? I hope not because that might make extraterrestrial beings think a lot less of us. Where does the line between intelligent animal and intelligent being get placed?
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