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THE MOST INTELLIGENT ANIMALS
To the professional animal-man, year in and year out comes the eternal question, "Which are the most intelligent animals?"
The question is entirely legitimate. What animals are the best exponents of animal intelligence?
It seems to me that the numerous factors involved, and the comparisons that must be made, can best be expressed in figures. Opinions that are based upon only one or two sets of facts are not worth much. There are about ten factors to be taken into account and appraised separately.
In order to express many opinions in a small amount of space, we submit a table of estimates and summaries, covering a few mammalian species that are representative of many. But, try as they will, it is not likely that any two animal men will set down the same estimates. It all depends upon the wealth or the poverty of first-hand, eye-witness evidence. When we enter the field of evidence that must stand in quotation marks, we cease to know where we will come out. We desire to state that nearly all of the figures in the attached table of estimates are based upon the author's own observations, made during a period of more than forty years of ups and downs with wild animals. ESTIMATES OF THE COMPARATIVE INTELLIGENCE AND ABILITY OF CERTAIN CONSPICUOUS WILD ANIMALS, BASED UPON KNOWN PERFORMANCES, OR THE ABSENCE OF THEM. [Footnote: To the author, correspondence regarding the reasons for these estimates is impossible.]
[beginning of chart]
Perfection in all=100 [list of categories below are written vertically above the columns, with the last column unnamed and representing a total score of animal intelligence/1000]
Hereditary Knowledge Perceptive Faculties Original Thought Memory
Reason Receptivity in Training Efficiency in Execution Nervous
Energy Keenness of the Senses Use of the Voice
Primates
Chimpanzee . . . . . . . . .100 100 100 100 75 100 100 100 100 50 925
Orang-Utan . . . . . . . . .100 100 100 75 100 75 100 75 100 25 850
Gorilla. . . . . . . . . . . . .50 50 50 50 75 25 25 50 100 25 500
Ungulates
Indian Elephant . . . . . .100 100 100 100 100 100 100 75 50 25 850
Rhinoceros. . . . . . . . .25 25 25 25 25 0 0 25 25 0 175
Giraffe . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 25 25 25 25 25 0 25 100 0 300
White-Tailed Deer . . .100 100 100 25 50 0 0 100 100 0 575
Big-Horn Sheep . . . . . .100 100 50 25 50 0 0 100 100 0 525
Mountain Goat. . . . . . .100 100 100 25 100 0 0 100 100 0 625
Domestic Horse. . . . . .100 100 100 75 75 75 75 100 100 50 850
Carnivores
Lion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 100 50 75 50 75 50 100 100 25 725
Tiger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 75 50 50 50 25 25 100 100 0 575
Grizzly Bear . . . . . . . . .100 100 50 25 50 75 50 75 100 25 725
Brown Bear (European)100 100 50 25 50 75 50 75 100 25 650
Gray Wolf . . . . . . . . . . . 100 100 100 25 75 00 100 100 25 625
Coyote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 75 50 25 50 0 0 75 100 25 500
Red Fox . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 100 50 75 100 0 0 100 100 25 650
Domestic Dog . . . . . . . . .50 100 75 75 75 75 100 100 100 100 850
Wolverine . . . . . . . . . . .100 100 100 25 100 0 75 100 100 0 700
Beaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 100 100 25 100 0 100 100 100 0 725
According to the author's information and belief, these are "the most intelligent" animals: The Chimpanzee is the most intelligent of all animals below man. His mind approaches most closely to that of man, and it carries him farthest upward toward the human level. He can learn more by training, and learn more easily, than any other animal.
The Orang-Utan is mentally next to the chimpanzee.
The Indian Elephant in mental capacity is third from man.
The high-class domestic Horse is a very wise and capable animal; but this is chiefly due to its age-long association with man, and education by him. Mentally the wild horse is a very different animal, and in the intellectual scale it ranks with the deer and antelopes.
The Beaver manifests, in domestic economy, more intelligence, mechanical skill and reasoning power than any other wild animal.
The Lion is endowed with keen perceptive faculties, reasoning ability and judgment of a high order, and its mind is surprisingly receptive.
The Grizzly Bear is believed to be the wisest of all bears.
The Pack Rat (Neotona) is the intellectual phenomenon of the great group of gnawing animals. It is in a class by itself.
The White Mountain Goat seems to be the wisest of all the mountain summit animals whose habits are known to zoologists and sportsmen.
A high-class Dog is the animal that mentally is in closest touch with the mind, the feelings and the impulses of man; and it is the only one that can read a man's feelings from his eyes and his facial expression.
The Marvelous Beaver. Let us consider this animal as an illuminating example of high-power intelligence.
In domestic economy the beaver is the most intelligent of all living mammals. His inherited knowledge, his original thought, his reasoning power and his engineering and mechanical skill in constructive works are marvelous and beyond compare. In his manifold industrial activities, there is no other mammal that is even a good second to him. He builds dams both great and small, to provide water in which to live, to store food and to escape from his enemies. He builds air-tight houses of sticks and mud, either as islands, or on the shore. When he cannot live as a pond-beaver with a house he cheerfully becomes a river-beaver. He lives in a river-bank burrow when house-building in a pond is impossible; and he will cheerfully tunnel under a stone wall from one-pond monotony, to go exploring outside.
[Illustration: CHRISTMAS AT THE PRIMATES' HOUSE Chimpanzees (with large ears) and orang-utans (small ears). The animal on the extreme right is an orang of the common caste]
He cuts down trees, both small and large, and he makes them fall as he wishes them to fall. He trims off all branches, and leaves no "slash" to cumber the ground. He buries green branches, in great quantity, in the mud at the bottom of his pond, so that in winter he can get at them under a foot of solid ice. He digs canals, of any length he pleases, to float logs and billets of wood from hinterland to pond.
If you are locating beavers in your own zoo, and are wise, you can induce beavers to build their dam where you wish it to be. This is how we did it!
We
