Animal Intelligence
Daily Mail Thursday,August 25, 2016
By Charles Legge
If there was such a thing as animal IQ which would rate in the top 10?
This assumes a direct cognitive ladder, from lower to higher life forms, with our own intelligence at the top.
But cognition takes different forms, often incomparable to ours. Are we less intelligent the. A squirrel because
we can't recall the locations of buried acorns? Brain size, tool use, vocabulary and soci learning are just a few
possible tools to measure animal IQ. There is no agreed test for measuring interspecies IQ.
One attempt to correlate animal IQ was made by Edward O. Wilson, a professor of science at Havard University's
Museum of Comparative Zoology.
He explained his system thus: '' I relied on the "encephalisation index", which measures the size of the brain relative
to that of the body as a whole and has been shown to be roughly correlated with intelligence." He arrived at a
top ten of:
1. Chimpanzee; 2. Gorilla; 3. Orangutan; 4. Baboon; 6. Monkey; 7. Orca; 8. Dolphin; 9. Elephant; and 10. Pig.
An alternative study looked at the concentration of neurones in the neocortex, the area involved in higher
functions such as sensory perception, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, conscious thought, and
in humans language.
The result here gave a very different answer 1. Sperm Whale; 2. Humans; 3. Killer Wahle; 4. Pilot Whale; 5.
Orangutan; 7. Chimpanzee; 8. African Elephant; 9. Gorilla; 10. Indian Elephant.
Another test measured intelligence with regards to self-awareness: the experimenter discreetly marks the animal
with a coloured dye.
The animal is then presented with a mirror and their reactions is observed. A self-aware animal will turn their
body to get a better view, touch the coloured spot or try to remove it. Using this, ten animals demonstrated self-awareness. They were 1. Human, 2. Orangutan, 3. Chimpanzee, 4. Gorilla, 5. Bottlenose Dolphin, 6. Elephant
7. Orca, 8. Bonobo, 9. Thesis Macaque, and 10. European Magpie. There are many more tests of animal intelligence.
Other creatures thought to have high IQ are giant octopuses, which can play, sovle problems, navigate through mazes
and have a respectable short-term memory. African Grey parrots can mimic words and express emotion, and rats
which have remarkable maze skills.
Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
http://www.973-eht-namuh-973.com/Alchem ... 202041.htm