These are a few excerpts from a book I finished reading recently.
Each shows a surprising amount of intelligence in a particular animal; some far more than you would expect.
On Prairie Dogs (Social rodents living in large, communal burrows in the western USA):
On Orangutans:
On Wolves:
On the Portia Fimbriata Spider:
On Echidnas (Porcupine-like animal from Australia):
Some amazing signs of animal intelligence, eh? Especially in places you'd never think to look for it!
Each shows a surprising amount of intelligence in a particular animal; some far more than you would expect.
On Prairie Dogs (Social rodents living in large, communal burrows in the western USA):
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Recently, a scholar from Arizona, Con Slobodchikoff, discovered that prairie dog calls are even more sophisticated than previously thought. Not only do they have distinct calls for different enemies, but they also have a special sound made only for human beings approaching their territory, and yet another different sound for a human male armed with a gun. Moreover, if the same man returns months later without his gun, the prairie dogs remember that he once came by with a gun, and give the warning sound for man carrying gun. Such complexity was never imagined possible, and even now there are many scientific skeptics who find the idea of such sophisticated communication unsettling. |
On Orangutans:
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... they have been known to do, in the words of one of the leading researchers, Anne Russon, "a multitude of prodigiously intelligent things. They took canoes for rides down the river, for instance. Humans heading upriver might spot one of them cruising down; if humans were surprised, the orangutan just floated nonchalantly by. Orangutans also siphoned fuel, made fires, washed laundry, unlocked doors with keys, weeded paths, untied the most complex knots humans could make, hung hammocks and rode in them, cooked pancakes, and brushed their teeth." Here is an example of an animal who clearly closely observes humans and learns from them. |
On Wolves:
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...raised both wolves and dogs as companion animals (not to be recommended) By watching humans open a door, wolves quickly learned how to turn the knob. His dogs never did. |
On the Portia Fimbriata Spider:
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(Portias eat other spiders) ... When a portia arrives at the web of a spider she wishes to deceive into thinking prey has been caught, she employs and astonishingly sophisticated plan of attack: She plucks the web silk strand, or slaps it, or pulls on it, or flutters it, with one or two or three or any other number of up to ten of her legs [(they use their mouth parts as legs too)], not to mention twitching of her abdomen up and down, and is therefore able to make literally hundreds of thousands of different combinations. Sometimes she tries just about everything without success. Suddenly, one combination gets the attention of the resident spider. She thinks an insect she is used to eating is struggling in her web and approaches. But she can become suspicious and stop. Portia goes through her repertoire again, and the spider is wary, until, bingo, the exact right combination comes up and she slowly moves forward. Portia 'knows' what works, and plays the same combination over and over to lure her victim ever closer, until she comes within striking distance. Then the rightful, but unwary owner of the web is history. [...] visual hunters rarely let their prey out of sight, but the portia does. Once she realizes (I relish the use of the word here!) that she has been sighted, she takes a long detour, losing visual contact with the web. She has not forgotten what she is after. Rather, she has a plan. She climbs up a nearby tree, moving slowly along a vine growing over the spider's web, which she still cannot see. All this maneuvering can take up to an hour. Then portia drops down on her silk line alongside the web and begins swinging until she is able to grab her unwitting victim (sometimes even another portia -- she has no innate distaste for cannibalism). If we bear in mind that portia has no visual contact -- already an unusual behavior for a spider -- we seem forced to acknowledge that she has a memory. As Jackson has so well put it: "It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Portia solves detour problems in its head, makes plans, and then acts on these plans." What is extrodinary here is to see a spider, often thought of as a pure automaton, using trial and error (unknown to any other spider). There seems to be no escaping the thought that in portia we have a "thinking" spider; a flexible spider; a spider with a good memory. True, spider brains are only about the size of a pinhead. Yet in their hunting techniques, spiders are nearly as sophisticated as humans. |
On Echidnas (Porcupine-like animal from Australia):
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Captive echidnas have been known to stack drinking containers in a corner to climb out of an escape-proof cage. |
Some amazing signs of animal intelligence, eh? Especially in places you'd never think to look for it!
) 
... and they don't look smart
... i had 2 wolf pets ( they were brothers ) 
