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Animal Einsteins
When it comes to intelligence, human beings are the top dogs of the animal kingdom. Or so we tell ourselves. But in recent years, scientists have been documenting surprising intelligence and emotional depth in animals ranging from humble honeybees to thundering elephants. Through studies in labs and in the wild, researchers have found animals communicating complex ideas, solving problems, using tools and expressing their feelings — behaviors once thought to be uniquely human.
The intelligence we’re talking about is more than, say, training a dog to detect cancer in humans, a feat that may save many lives. It’s the ability of the animal to use an innate trait for a complex purpose. Here are, some amazing examples.
Artistic Monkey Business
When Janet Schmid became executive director of the Little River Zoo in Norman, Oklahoma, in 1996, she learned a lot about the intelligence of monkeys. She and her husband adopted a young male who had a naughty personality, and named him Mr. Bailey. The monkey particularly liked taking car rides, insisting that he insert the ignition key and ride shotgun in the passenger’s seat. "He loved to duck below the window as we’d come to an intersection", Schmid recalls, "When we’d stop, he’d jump up and laugh at the car next to us, just to get a rise out Of the passengers".
Now 12 years old, Mr. Bailey has become an avid painter. He uses a variety of brush strokes to create colorful, abstract canvases and, like any temperamental artist, prefers not to be disturbed while creating his art. "He’ll paint steadily for almost an hour and won’t let anyone interrupt him until he puts down his brush", says Schmid. "He’s amazing to watch bemuse you can tell there’s a thought process occurring. When we raised him, we quit watching TV because be was so entertaining".
Ivy League Parrot
The term birdbrain is considered an insult, but some birds actually are pretty brainy. One African grey parrot in suburban Boston is said to have the cognitive abilities of a five-year-old child. Alex (for Avian Learning Experiment) is a 29-year-old bird that’s been tutored most of his life by Irene Pepperberg, PhD, a Harvard-educated professor now teaching at Brandeis University. Alex can identify 50 different objects, seven colors, five shapes, quantities up to six, and the concepts of bigger, smaller, same and different. "And he said, ’I’m tarry’", reports Pepperberg. "He knew what was appropriate to say".
Pepperberg insists that Alex makes reasoned decisions — meaning he possesses language abilities once thought to separate humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. During an experiment in 2004, researchers gave Alex different-colored blocks in sets of two, three and six. When asked which color group bed five blocks, Alex replied, "None". And he repeated the answer in duplicate tests. Although Alex had previously learned the term to describe the difference between two identically sized objects, he apparently interpreted the concept of "none" as an absence of quantity all on his own.
"The important thing was not just that he understood a zero-like concept", says Pepperberg, "but that he was able to take information from one domain and apply it to another. That’s a lot like a high school student answering questions on a quiz show".
Such feats have made Alex a celebrity.
Cultured Orangutans (猩猩)
Because orangutans and humans share 97 percent of the same DNA, it’s no surprise that the primates exhibit impressive brainpower. Take Chantek, a 28-year-old living in Zoo Atlanta. Raised like a human child by anthropologist H. Lyn Miles, PhD, Chantek learned to use a toilet, clean his room and receive an allowance, which he spent on trips to McDonald’s. Today he knows more than 150 words in sign language and can comprehend spoken English. Likened to a four-year-old child, he can also make necklaces, play Simon Says, and sign that he wants a car ride to the park.
"We can have a conversation and play games together", says Miles, a professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. "He might sign ’bed sleep hug’ if he wants a nighttime hug before going to sleep"; Miles says Chantek has even invented some new words, signing "tomato toothpaste" for ketchup, and "eye drink" for contact lens solution. Chantek calls himself an "orangutan person" to distinguish himself from others.
Emotional Elephants
Known for their legendary memories, elephants also exhibit jumbo-sized compassion. When one elephant in a herd is slowed from injury, the rest will wait until it-catches up. And if an elephant gets stuck in a mud hole, others help. "They’ll try to get under the elephant like a forklift", says Marc Bekoff, PhD, a professor of animal behavior at the University of Colorado in Boulder. "Then they’ll push it out".
Bekoff, author of Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues, notes that after an elephant dies, the others in its herd will grieve. He observed a group of elephants in northern Kenya after the death of their matriarch. "They were just moping (闷闷不乐) around with their heads and tails low", says Bekoff. "Clearly they were in mourning".
Elephants also demonstrated their sensitivity and compassion before the 2OO4 tsunami slammed into the coast of Thailand. Eyewitnesses reported that elephants were screaming and running for higher ground. But on the way, they used their trunks to scoop up and save about a dozen tourists.
Buzzing Prodigies (天才)
It’s hard to imagine something as small as a bug having much in the brain department. But the humble honeybee possesses the second-most complex language, after humans. When a honeybee returns to a hive after dining on flower nectar, it performs a complex waggle dance to tell other bees whether the meal is worth a trip. "The honeybee can send 10,000 messages, providing the distance, direction and quantity of food", says James Gould, PhD, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University. "Not even chimps or dolphins can say as many things".
Some critics argue that bee dances reflect innate behavior rather than intelligence, but Gould insists that the bees are brainy. If they sense a storm coming, they’ll stop their dance so other bees won’t get caught in the rain while searching for food. And when they’re looking for a new home, honeybee scouts who’ve found a dry spot will suddenly change their dance if an observer pours a glass of water inside. "They’re a lot like people judging whether to buy a house", says Gould.
Smart Suckers
Octopuses may be spineless, but they’re not brainless. At the Seattle Aquarium, marine biologist Roland Anderson, PhD, reports that giant, Pacific octopuses (GPOs) are not only intelligent creatures but also leaded with personality. One female was named Emily Dickinson because she was so shy she used to hide in a narrow space behind the tank’s backdrop. A frisky male became Leisure Suit Larry, due to his fondness for groping volunteers who wandered too close to his tank. "If he were a man, he’d have been cited for sexual harassment", says Anderson.
Last year, Anderson devised an unusual intelligence test. He put some small fish into a plastic jar with a wide-mouth screw top and gave them to seven different GPOs. Most of the octopuses had trouble opening the jars. But after Anderson drilled holes in the jar tops so the GPOs could smell the small fish, the octopuses performed better. Then he coated the outside of the jars with fr6sen fish to keep the GPOs’ interest, and this time, they quickly opened the lids. "A sign of their intelligence", says Anderson.
Creative Dolphins
As far back as Aristotle, dolphins have been known as wise guardians of the sea, protecting sailors from sharks and guiding ships to land. What’s more impressive is dolphins’ ability to communicate with each other, especially over vast distances. Dolphins emit high-pitched whistles to converse with other dolphins they can’t see.
Some also can understand sign language. At the University of Hawaii’s Dolphin Institute, trainers taught a female named Akeakamai the meaning of words and the word order of sentences. So when trainers signed "person surfboard fetch", Akeakamai knew to "take the surfboard to the person". And when the trainers switched the gestures to say "surfboard person fetch", the dolphin knew she had to "take the person to the surfboard".
In a show of dolphins’ inventiveness, trainers may gesture "create tandem", and a pair of dolphins will perform a series of moves in synchrony. "They may swim in a circle, leap out of the water in a spinning motion and spit water out of their mouths together", says Louis Herman, PhD, director of the Dolphin Institute. "We never know what they’ll do. And to this day, researchers are uncertain how the dolphins tell each other what moves they’ll display".
Such behaviors as communicating complex ideas and using tools are not unique to human any more.