Tags: animals, videos, animal rights
The 15 Smartest Animals on Earth
analise.dubner When putting this list of the smartest animals in the world together, I had to give myself criteria to follow. A complex brain is not a factor so much as the ability to use creative thinking. Sure, these are my own standards, and some might complain that this list is decidedly anthropomorphic - seeing as how I'm judging these smart animals by obvious human criteria. For example, why should creative thinking mean one animal is smarter than another animal that can remember the location of 2,200 individual nuts it buried over 2 years? That's just how I decided to do it. To me, creative thinking makes an animal smart, not memorization. I couldn't limit myself to a list of just the top 10 smartest animals because that would have eliminated some incredibly smart and creative creatures. So you'll have to suffer through my longer-than-10-but-shorter-than-20-item list of the most intelligent animals.
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Orangutan
«»Orangutans are now considered to be the smartest of the primates, over chimps. Orangutans have been taught to saw wood, use a hammer to nail structures together and even siphon liquids through a hose. But while that could be simply marked up to rote training, what makes the orangutan smart is its ability to understand why we complete these actions and use them in the wild when they might be helpful. For example, an orangutan was taught how to build a simple protective structure using tools available in the wild. When released from captivity, the orangutan was observed building the same structure to get out of the rain.1 of 15
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The 15 Smartest Animals on Earth at 10/18/2012 2:30 PM
Crow at 4/29/2012 11:13 AM
The 15 Smartest Animals on Earth at 2/22/2011 11:24 AM