Animal Intelligence

I love hearing people talk about how smart their pets or other animals are for doing tricks using tools etc. Personally I have a slightly different view on animal intelligence which if they were smart enough to have a sense of humour I expect they would appreciate.

Fetch - Look how smart my dog is, I just threw away this stick and he brought it back. If your bin man did this for you with all the stuff you throw away I doubt you would regard him as smart.

Linear thinking - Using fetch as an example, most dog owners will have either deliberately or accidentally thrown a stick over a bunch of brambles or thorns, expecting the dog to run around. Some will but on the whole either they stand looking gormless or charge through and come out with thorns stuck into their bodies they are seemingly unaware of.
Trying to find things that have gone into water most dogs do not shove their heads under water, but a large number of those who do will bring it out in a hurry when they try having a quick sniff to trace it.

Ever alert - There are a number of myths about catnapping animals who are constantly alert and aware. Which explains why cats fall off furniture while asleep.

Well trained owners - I guess one definite area that shows how some owners can be convinced their pets are intelligent is when they have been trained. to. 'My Fufu is so clever every time I come home they go straight to the kitchen and waith by the fridge. My Fufu knows where the mini sausages are.' Their Fufu has trained their owner to give them sausages every time they come home, not really proving the intelligence of the pet, just the gullibility of the owner.

This of course brings us neatly on to the fact that people are also animals. We consider ourselves the most intelligent species on the planet for a number of reasons, personally I consider arrogance to be the foremost. The big brain intelligence argument has some but limited merit, the sperm whale has the largest by far larger than ours, so then to make ourselves feel better we compare it to body size making us top of the chart, not that we have selected figures to support concept at all. There is more to it and in fairness I doubt there is a great case to say we aren't the smartest animal on the planet but rather than saying great things about us is this saying bad things about the rest of the organisms we share our world with.

If this looks like I am declaring our species stupid, you have at least been smart enough to see the final point. If you aren't aware why either you haven't been out much lately or are one of the people demonstrating how stupid we are.