Many people are convinced that animals are primitive creatures, driven only by instincts. But those who have an animal at home will not hesitate to say yes to the question of whether animals have intelligence. And not in vain, because there is a lot of scientific evidence for this.
Features of the intelligence of animals
The intelligence of an animal is different from that of a human and cannot be measured by conventional IQ tests. In order not to confuse the instinctive behavior of animals with reasonable, it should be understood that instinct is an innate ability, and intelligence is an ability acquired in the course of everyday experience.
For the manifestation of intellectual abilities, an animal needs obstacles on the way to achieving a certain goal. But, if, for example, a dog receives food from its bowl every day during its life, then intellectual abilities in this case will not manifest. In an animal, intellectual actions can arise only in order to invent a new method of action to achieve a goal. Moreover, this method will be individual for each individual animal. There are no universal rules in the animal kingdom.
Although animals have intellectual abilities, they do not play a major role in their life. They trust instincts more, and use intelligence from time to time, and in their life experience it is not fixed and is not inherited.
Examples of intelligent animal behavior
The dog is the very first animal that man has tamed. She is considered the smartest of all pets. Once a famous surgeon who lived in the last century found a dog with a damaged limb under his door. He healed the animal and thought that the dog would stay with him as a token of gratitude. But the animal had a different owner, and the first affection turned out to be stronger, and the dog left. But what was the surprise of the surgeon when, some time later, on the threshold of his house, he found the same dog that brought another dog with a broken paw to him in the hope that the doctor would help her too.
And what, no matter how a manifestation of intelligence, can explain the behavior of a pack of dogs that cross the road in a slender line along a pedestrian crossing, while people, endowed with intelligence from birth, run across it in the wrong place.
Not only dogs, but also other animals show their intelligence. Even ants are capable of solving very complex problems when it is necessary to remember and transmit information about a rich food source to their congeners. But the manifestation of their mental abilities is limited to this. In other circumstances, intelligence is not involved.
It has been observed that swallows give alarm to their chicks at the time of hatching, when a person is near the nest. The chick stops banging on the shell with its beak until it understands from the voice of its parents that the danger has passed. This example is evidence that intelligence in animals is manifested as a result of life experience. The swallows did not adopt the fear of man from their parents; they learned to fear him in the process of life.
Likewise, rooks avoid a man with a gun, because smell gunpowder. But they could not learn this from their ancestors, because gunpowder was invented later than rooks appeared. Those. their fear is also the result of life experience.
Every owner of a cat, dog, parrot or rat has confirmation that his pet has intelligence. It is clear that animals are not smarter than humans, but they have other qualities that are valuable to humans.
