Howdy all, I thought I would start a thred on a subject that is dear to my hart
Animal inteligance...
...
Throughout my life I have been whitness to many an animal showing how incredably smart they realy are. and over the years I have collected stories of such oddities that need to be shaired ...
  this is lible to wind up being more of a novil than a simple thred so please excuse that aspect because I want to hear your insights as well.
  .....
When I was a Kid I was raised on a ranch in Northern california, we had horses ,pigs cows and chickens and a trusty Dog named Dusty.one of my chores was to feed the critters and i did it with only a bit of grumbleing.  rain snow slete or hail the critters had to be fed.
  Now Our horse was from the Oregon range and was only green broke so you realy had to want to ride her to have to put up with her attitude !
so needless to say I never rode her much..which seamed to be fine by her i might add.
but after a few months in her pin she wanted out to explore... you could tell.. she just acted bored ! so one day I desided that i wanted to go for a ride down to the mail box over 2 miles away... and Sugar(the horse) saw me walking up the drive way towards the barn ... she Nickered at me in antisipation.... she already knew what i had in mind !  so after putting on the haulter which she stuck her head into and paitiantly waited for me to buckel it up , i threw on the bare back saddle... just a blanket with sturips
on it realy ... and a handle of leather.... I scniched her up adn she alwayse took in alot of air when putting any saddle on her ,  so I said Sugar ! if you want to go stop holding your breath.... and she let her breath out and gave me a sheepish look like "ahhhh geee ...ok !" 
If i had to guess I'ed say her inteligance was that of a 6 year old Human.
we went for a good ride and half way home I just laid the rains on her neck and said Ok you can do what you want... she stopped and turned her head arround and looked at me as if to say "What "  I laughed and said You can go where you wnat to girl , its ok ! ... her ears purked up and she wandered off the road towards a clearing , i said where are you going ? and i got the attention of one ear but not both .... soon we found ourselves on the low road and she started trotting ... i grabbed the rains and said OOOoh Ok i get it ..... ( she liked to run on this road) i said are you ready and every mussel in her frame tightened up ... are you ready girl ? and the trot became almost a vertical bounce with almost no foward movement .. I said GO get'em girl ... and rocks flew as she peeled out up the road at break neck speed
she as a fast horse and she was proud of it ! se covered the 1/2 mile to home in a flash and when we arrives you could see the sparkel in her eyes ! ...
i praised her and brushed her down and gave her an extra big can of grane and it was business time...time to eat !
that set me to thinking, how did she know what i was thinking ? when i was walking up the drive way to the barn ?
we raised that horse from a yearling and I am sure that she understood every word i said ...   
I have seen that horse chase cyotes out of her pin with an anger that would be heck to stop.... I've seen her nuzzel her fole with a mothers love that made tears come to my eyes... when I approached her and her new baby I said I'm not going to do anything sugar i just wann'a look at your baby....
and with a mothers intent observation she watched carefully. makeing sure that was all i did ! ... this same horse was playfull and onery too... one time I walked into her pin with a peanut butter and jelly sandwitch  ... she came over to see what i was eating so I gave her a piece.... WRONG move! she  liked it so much she nocked me down and got the rest , and then nuzzeled me while i was on the ground laughing !  she was a character !
but Almost all the critters i have met show the same Brightness the same inteligance, and through the years I have learned that that is because they are smart ! , infact I am bold enough to say they are as smart as you and I
they just lack the hands  the voice box and all the equipment to make it easy to spot. they do better with 4 legs than I can on 2 no doubt they cope with a world when they have very limited resorces.
besides never having met a Mammal i didn't instantly Love I have a way with critters that usually, not always makes them like me as well.  I treet them as equils , and they usually love that ... be it horse, cow, pig, dog or cat
they all are so very inteligant  as to be scary !
... However I am not a vedgitarian , nor could i be, so that puts me at odds with my dinner some times,  and though I realise logically if i realise this I shouldn't eat meat... but I am what I am and I love stakes, so I guess I'm a cannable ! but it sure is tasty !
I believe that every form of life on this planet is inteligant in its own way. now a tree may not show alot of brains but they do comunicate to other trees chemically, to do that there is some form of inteligance there.
but animals are all blessed with the same amount of smarts that you and I have be it a Cat or Dog or bear or rhino. their inteligance is there its just very hard to see some times, I mentioned that Sugar had about a 6year old humans inteligance, as for horse inteligance she had to be way up there !
because lets face it if your lot in life is 4 paws a tail 2 ears a nose mouth and toung , its purdy hard to write a letter !
some concepts are foren to their world too... like counting  they would simply say WHY ?  there is one , many and a whole bunch , what more do you need to know ?
  Now Your turn ! explain your observations of animal Intelegance , just for fun !
thanks !
Bob.........

 

Indeed !
there are many instances in which our Dogs knew what we were thinking...
sitting watching tv and the dog gets up and walks to the door and sit s there pointing to his leash.... and the wife looks astonished and said Gnarr ! I only thought about takeing you for a walk .... his big tail now thumping the floor ! and a big smile crosses his face... and at the word "Walk" the other dog jumps up and runs to the door not to be left behind .....
needless to say we took the dogs for a walk ! hehehehehe
Our big Pup 's name was of all things Gnarr ( ga'-Nar ) we got his as a year old and was free to a good home ... he was a lab grate dane cross and a big hefty feller with a hart of gold... he learned to say cookie or Rookie...and Yum yum  and would point with his nose to what he wanted...look at you ...make sure your watching him and quickly point to what ever it was and look back at you to see if you knoticed....
(some times we're kind'a dense ya see)
A few of our cats use english, but very rairly and only when their desprate...
one time a Young kitten fell into a trash basket in the house and her Momm'a set by the trash basket saying Help,help...help  then would run down the hall eay to the bedroom
and say Help again.... then run back to the trash basket... she woke me up she was that persistant ... and so I got up figureing something was amiss... so i said ok you said help what do you want ? she came to me in the hall way and said Help again and turned and ran to the kitchen .... i followed her and she sat by the trash can ... i said what ?
you want my help ? and the blink of her eyes was so fast that i barly cought it ... that usually means yes when they blink their eyes , dogs do that too !
anyway.. i saw nothing to be out of order so I picked her up and when i did she bent way over looking into the trash basket .... i said in here ? she muttered something
so i removed the old cerial box and a few papers after setting her down. and she stayed right there very intent on that basket..... sure enough not one kitten but 2 were in there... and for the life of me i don't know how they got in there !...she greeted them and led them under the chair where she fed the entire group.
   i've never herd her say help again ... just that one time !
i feel as if I'm being taken advantage of by a smarter race sometimes ! HAHAHHAHAHHA
....
Bob.........

Hi

When I was much younger we had a Border Collie.... Her name was Gemma ( or to give her proper name... Spirit of Teesdale Princess).

That dog was the most intelligent animal I have ever known. A list of things she could do, open the fridge, answer the phone (she would knock it off when it rang and come and fetch you), fetch newspapers (on her own from the local shops), She would listen intensely to what was being said and cock her ears, raise her eyes at certain words, she would fetch her lead when SHE wanted to go walkies and fetch her food bowl when SHE was hungry, the list was endless.

I used to have converstaions with her that frightened me to death at the time....

She died at 15 of a stroke and I can still see her at the vets, having to be put down...... I cried my heart out for days.

I now have cats, having been a dog person all my previous life, they are more of a challenge and train you, more than I can ever hope to train them....


Buffy

Yah Man !
Border collies are smart critters there is no doubt about that !
IN my experience when You raise a dog from Puppy on up they learn Your language not THE language... they learn words or even sentances which they KNOW without a doubt they know what that means !  but as for general conversation I think the critters mostly just right it off to babble and not very interesting.  almost all animals do this cats are an exception to that rule as they are so smart they could care less most of the time !hehehehehe but sense their social order is so complicated they seam to have little time for human antics with rare exceptions mind you, cats that think their people are usually ones that have been arround people sense birth and simply think of us as equils .
Dogs on the other hand tend to idilize you and love you and are Proud of you and proud to be a part of you ....  the diferences between animals is stagering ! as is only reasonable
but sense my experience lies with farm animals and cats and dogs  my knowledge is rather limited  but the more i learn on the subject the more fasinated i become...
how so much inteligance can be cramed into such a small space is incredable !
I say that thinking of the brain size itself as if that had any relivance when I realise that brain size has very little to do with it in reality.
I believe that brain size is directly porportional to Memory and the complexity of the body theirin.  and is not the indicator of inteligance because i have seen very inteligant parots that could count answer questions and in all intents and purposes talkand understand the human language with only a few exceptions...
so how can this be if brain size is the rule for inteligance ? when a parot only has a few ounces to work with  yet in most cases is smarter than a dog ?
and another thing we must reconize when thinking along these lines is what the human influance has done to the species as a whole... dogs have been dummied down for centuries
and the same has to be said for all farm animals... after all you don't want a 2000pound cow very smart, their dangerous ! pure and simple, of all the Dogs mainly the hurding group have been bread for their inteligance . and believe me they are far smarter than the avrage run of the mill Mutt you will meet. but animals like the parot have not been dummied down all that much , some yes because captivity drives them insane most of the time...so the smart perrish in this case while the Retards survive quite well... again all because of the human influance.
However I have ran accross one species that stopped getting smarter as the eions have rolled by on this planet and that is the skunk.... and it actually makes sense if you think about it... the smellyest ones survive the best , so they all stink very good !
they have no need to be smarter other than tackeling new feeding grounds  most preditors leave them be  and in general its the preditor that causes change in the animal kingdom
remembering only the harty survive in the survival of the species theam, the skunk lives out side that rule as does the porqupine.... its level of defence is so atuned that there is no need to advance anymore or as fast as the others .... and both of these critters are dummer than dirt !  there just ain't alot up stairs for these guys to work with !
  and that is odd if you think brain size has something to do with it  because their brain is say bigger than a squirels, but a squirel is a far more complex animal in smarts and in behaviour.
  so Inteligance must be a very very small program ! one that can be written inside a cell on DNA,  posably on the molectular scale and all the rest of the brain is just controling the body and memory of past events...  this would fit with what we see in the animal kingdom but who the heck knows if it has any validity or not ...I'm just guessing here ! <grin>
  I do know that critters on the whole are just as smart as we are, they experience emotions, sadness of loss, the elation of something new and fun. they dream, they have moods, so in every respect except comunication they are as smart as we are, except they don't have the same equipment we do  so comunication is near impossable most of the time.
....  I read the stories of the chimps that learned sign language with awe... and when i learned that instead of useing complete sentensies they just used key words...to get their points accross...i was dumbfounded ! that is exactly what my dog does !  though he learned "I want Yum Yum"  thats hardly a complete train of though.... well may it is !
he was a good eater ! HEHEHEHEH !
....
  Another novil here sorry .... got carried away again !
ugh ! please excuse the incredably poor spelling ! gads !
....
Bob.......

The smartest animals I have known were my ferrets.

One day I came back in from getting the mail only to find that the Alpha had gotten onto the counter and dumped the treats down to the other ferrets.  He then went exploring in the kitchen, which is blocked off.  I saw that the ottoman (made of hollow pipes and a piece of fabric) was close to the bar stool and that was probably how he got onto the pass through.  Thinking I had made that mistake, I moved the ottoman, pick up the treats, and retrieve the Alpha from the kitchen (plus pick up pots and pans, a scrubber, and a few other items).

After getting the barriers back up and sitting down I watched these ferts do something amazing.  A number of them (there were 6 or 7 at this time) managed to get ahold of the ottoman and start pulling it back towards the bar stool.    Guess I had not been the one who made the mistake initially.

Throughout the years they continued to do amazing things like that but that one really stands out.

thats neet !
a Herferd bull we had when i was younger was a character, most of the time nothing bothered him in the least he would get layed down and he just wouldn't move for anything.
he was cumfy ! ... well one day one of the cows came down close to him and layed down and had her calf.... or was trying real hard to have her calf... she just couldn't deliver it !
and O'l Sir as we called him watched this goings on for about 2 hours, and dad was getting ready to call the vet and Sir gets up ...wonders over to the cow and nuzzels her and looks the siduation over.... puts the flat of his head on her stomach and put all his weight on her ! lifting his front feet clear off the ground POP out came the calf !  Momm'a cow let out with an OOOF ... and Sir sniffs the calf a few times nuzzels the cow again and goes back and lays down !  hehehehhe... He knew what was going on and he had the cure for the problem ! and it worked slicker than a wistle ! ... Mom and calf lived to a ripe old age !
and so did Sir ! hehehehe I often wondered what he'd have done if his horns wern't curled down to his cheeks leaveing his head flat fronted like that ... those things were his bumpers.... he rooted everybody out'a the way with them ! includeing me ! a few times.
him and the steer got to rough-houseing arround in the pasture one time and i saw him knock the steer down and turn his head to catch his ballance and hit a pine tree and took a hunk of bark out of the tree that a ford truck couldn't do at 20mph ! ... So I learned its a good thing to not have realy smart cows early on.... their dangerous enough when their dumb ! if their smart they know they don't have to take NO for an answer !
One time when i was walking home from school I saw our cow "Betsy" biteing the bobwire fence... I said hi to her and didn't think much of it that night she and 2 others got out and went exploreing and i was up till 2 in the morning getting them back in the pin !
i started looking for tracks and sure enough i found them through the fence where she was biteing it at....  i got closer and looked and shw loosened the barbs on the top strand of barb wire and slid the barbs over about 6" or so.... just enough so it wouldn't scratch her ... then she  squeezed between the wires on the fence till they sagged and walked right out !.... the others just followed her ! .... she was a pain to keep in because she was purdy smart... the others were easy to keep in but not O'l Betsy !  HAHAHAH
she was the one that had the calf by the way ...
.....
C ya
Bob........
 


Posted at: July 31, 2006, 11:35:28 PM

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Another story from the ranch ....
when I was growing up we raised a Hog...a newhampshire sow that got to be at least 800lbs
she was hudge !  My Dad named her Dotty after my Mom heheheh ! and she would grunt to you if you said her name ... to say the girl was smart is putting it mildly... but the twinkel in her wild looking eyes was all it ever took to make me laugh... what a combonation!
She never realy did anything remarkably  smart that I can point to but there is no doubt that her inteligance rivaled my own....  though one time she mashed up her grain pan and had it stuck in the fence on the other side of the pin... so when i arrived with the grain to feed her there was no grain pan.... so i set the grain down outside the pin and walked over to the pan and tried to get it loose.... it was hopelessly tangled in the hog wire and was going to take a pare of cutters to get it loose ... but i'm there tugging on it and Dotty walks up behind me and ears all erect looks at me as if to say ...Hay Kid where's the food ?... so I said Haing on Dotty i gott'a get your grain pan before i can feed you... you don't want me to put the grain on the ground do ya ? and with that she grunted..... so I'm there still struggeling with the pan... and in a few seconds later i am about to give up and go get the tools.... she must have seen my flustration because she walked over grabbed the pan with her teeth and with a twist of her head yanked the pan free... ( and half the fence loose)... with the pan still in her teeth she ambles over to her feeding place and drops the pan... i pat her on the butt and hurrilly give her her grain ! ....
I seen that hog lift the rear end of a 1953 ford 1/2 ton pick-up truck completely off the ground with her nose.... bite completely through a 2x4 board out of flustration and put her nose against my Dads leg..... and squeel a high pitched squeel.... this all happened when we were trying to put her in the truck to get her bred... needless to say she got her way
and my Dad was as white as a sheet.... he knew how very close he came to loosing that leg!.... but my Mom saved the day... she came up to the truck with a can of garbage, chicken scraps and patatoe peals.... that was her favorite treet ! ...she walked up the plank into the truck as simple and as nice as you could ever want .... My Dad looked at me and said Son ... let that be a lesson to ya never try to force a big animal to do something they don't wann'a do.... instead make them want to do it !
and those words have served me well too !.
c ya !
Bob......

Of course animals have intelligence. Humans are animals aren't they?

It amazes me that so many people still think that humans and animals are different.

Sky is a vegan X

Indeed ! 
I think that stems from having to kill the animals to eat them , its much easier if you think of them as a dumb animal with no more inteligance than a working machine.
after all if everyone thought as I do we'ed all be vedgitarians ! but me .... because I accept that i must Kill to survive.... i am a preditor in that respect, i don't like it but theres not much i can do about it .

when You see a Octipus unscrew a lid of a jar to get at the crab inside the jar you realise there is inteligance there... when you see a Squirel go through an elabreate obstical corse to get to the bird feeder you realise their not just clever critters but reasoning animals just like we are. when you see am Mother cat loose all her kittens and just go insane  and wander off you realise its not the motherly instinkt that our scientests say that drives, them but love.  when you see a Horse protecting her foal to the detriment of her own health  you begin to understand that the scientests have been wrong all along....
   I was privilaged to see a display of pure joy and love when I was younger displayed by 2 horses.... they had been seperated for almost a year.... and I road Molly back to the ranch and was to keep her there for my useage to check the fence line with in Montana.
when we arrived at the ranch Molly's head came up as if she hurd something or smelled something, and with my upbringing i learned to respect that , I looked arround for a bear or Cougar or something but saw nothing, she let out a whenny and Pete  the other horse Whennied back and you should have seen Molly then ... I was already dismounted and in the proccess of takeing off her saddle and she wanted to go and go NOW ... it took me the better amount of 15 minutes just to get the saddle off her ! she just would not stand still .... she was a big girl and at least 17 hands high and I had a real hard time getting up on her back....  I knew by the way she was acting keeping her in a pin was going to be a joke.... so I said You want to go see Pete ? and she booted me with her nose so hard it knocked me down ! ...I burst out laughing and said Ok Ok settle down I'll take you to see Pete..... she didn't settle down much but as we walked down there she nuzzerled me a few times and whennyed to Pete who alwayse whennyed back....
when we rounded the cornor  i was being lead by the horse , i wasn't leading the horse !
and Pete was half way out of his pin already ...seeing this i broke into a run and we arrived at the gate and Pete untangled himself from the fence and met us there, i turned Molly loose and watched them carry on for a good half hour.... it was so touching it brought tears to my eyes... they nuzzeled and hugged in horse fashion... and even pawed one another.... when i walked back to the house they were still nusseling .
just before night fall I went out and fed them and they were standing there side by side with their heads and necks over each other..... when they saw the hay comeing  they purked up  and took their places along the fence side by side....  I tossed the hay over them so as to get it away from the fence and Pete turned imediately and headded for it
Molly hesitated and then made eyecontact with me and the love in her eyes  was so apparant  i said "your welcome Molly !" then she went to the hay after i patted her soft nose.
  those two were buds man and there was no denieing it ... when ever I'ed ride Molly off Pete would be whennying till we were out of sight .... and soon as he saw us returning he'ed start it up again and it was alwayse the same greeting.... they couldn't wait to be togather again. 
  their just people in diferent shapes and lots of fur ! <grin>

Bob......