What animal species has the highest IQ next to humans?

Intelligent Animals

It's very difficult to know because it's hard to give an IQ test to an animal. Most IQ tests involve answering questions, and it's hard to expect an animal to understand them, let alone answer them.

Starting at the bottom, mice can be trained to make their way through mazes. They can also be taught to find and remember the location of a hidden platform in a tank of murky water so that they can sit on it instead of swimming to try to remain afloat. This last study involved the effect of something on the brain, I forget what, but at any rate the mice were intelligent enough to do it.

Goldfish can recognise colours, learn that a tap on the glass means food (my platies understand this too) and also habitually head for a certain part of the tank if this is where they are always fed.

Most dogs are very intelligent, which is obvious as they can easily be trained to do tricks, fetch sticks, etc. More specialised dogs can be trained to guide blind people or carry out other specialist tasks such as detecting explosives and illegal drugs. They are also good at mazes. A man called Pavlov experimented on dogs by ringing a bell each time he fed them. Eventually ringing the bell with no food present was enough to make them start salivating. 'Pavlov's Dogs' is a common saying.

Cats are good at judging people and have woken people up with an intruder in their home. Cats have alerted humans to everything from hidden explosives to gas leaks.

Some horses have been taught to count, but whether they understand the numbers or are responding to some unnoticed human body language is debated. Certainly, horses have returned home to bring help to injured masters, and will remember routes that they often take on rides. Some horses have memorised entire dressage tests. Miniature horses in America are being trained to take on the duties of guide dogs and this has been successful so far.

One species of finch inhabiting the Galapagos Islands uses its beak to poke twigs into tree-holes to extract grubs - a bird using a tool.

Parrots can count, recognise colours, shapes and words, and can talk well enough to answer questions correctly.

Big cats can be trained to perform circus tricks.

Elephants are extremely intelligent, and can understand voice commands. They will work to help humans, or to punish humans they dislike. Elephants have also been taught to count.

Crows are very smart. Researchers put a piece of meat down a tube, just out of reach of the crow. They then offered the crow a choice of tools to remove it, and the crows almost always chose the right tools. When offered only a straight wire, the crows bent it into a hook to pull out the piece of meat. Crows have also been observed dropping nuts at intersections so that cars will run over them and crack them. When the light turns red, the crows swoop down and eat the nuts.

The undebated most intelligent animal family are the primates. Chimpanzees are the most intelligent apes, sharing 97% of our DNA. Chimpanzees understand the concept of justice (Two young chimpanzees were trained to fetch a ball. When one fetched the ball, he was given a peanut as a reward. When the other fetched the ball, he was given a grape. The first chimpanzee saw the grape and became indignant because the second chimp had received a far better reward.) Chimpanzees have been taught to communicate using sign language (as have gorillas) and one chimp was able to point at a pain scale and at her mouth to indicate that she had a toothache. The use of tools to get at ants, smash open nuts, extract grubs from trees etc. have all been observed among wild and captive chimpanzees.

It would probably be safe to say that chimpanzees are the smartest, but there are a lot of brainy animals out there!.

Dolphins have been found to be remarkably intelligent animals.

First answer by LauraFrog. Last edit by Djtarrant. Contributor trust: 0 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 54 [recommend question]