Top 20 Most Intelligent Animals

When it comes to intelligence, size isn’t everything. This is fortunate for horses, whose brains are often compared to walnuts. Luckily, even small brains can be hard workers! Horses are prey animals, with strong fight-or-flight instincts. But wild horse herds have complex social hierarchies, and travel in rank order. Domesticated horses can respond to verbal and visual cues, recognize human emotions, and match voices to faces. In a 2016 study, horses were even taught to ask for a blanket to be put on or taken off by indicating abstract symbols on a wooden board. In another study that same year, horses learned to use a touch-screen to differentiate between shapes and sizes. Mr. Ed, eat your heart out.

They may be cold-blooded, but their brains are far from sluggish! Monitor lizards come in roughly 80 varieties - including the Komodo Dragon, which can grow up to 10 feet long. In the wild, some species cooperate to procure food - with one lizard baiting mother crocodiles away from their eggs while the other sneaks in to chow down. In captivity, Komodo dragons are said to recognize their zookeepers. But perhaps most amazingly, rock monitors are able to count. Sure, they’re not math whizzes, calculating Pi; but they can count to as high as six.

Ants demonstrate coordination the likes of which few species can compete, including humans. For decades, researchers have been giving credit to the colony itself, as if each ant is just a mindless drone simply following evolutionary instinct. However, contemporary research is changing that mentality towards our little insect friends. In reality, each individual ant displays jaw-dropping levels of intelligence considering their tiny size. Not only do they have remarkable memories for locations and paths, but also they are highly adaptive to change and excellent at evaluating risk. Those brains might be small, but they’re mighty.

There’s good reason for the old expression “sly as a fox”. Though their intelligence has earned them a bad rep, at least with farmers - whose chickens they are notorious for stealing - foxes should be admired for their resourcefulness, and their social and emotional intelligence. Cunning hunters with a knack for problem solving, foxes will adapt to new environments to find food, and have been known to outwit baited traps. But their smarts don’t begin and end there. They use an estimated 28 different vocal sounds to communicate, 8 of which are used only with their cubs. Affectionate parents - foxes are more than just chicken snatchers.

They might appear a little skittish, but don’t mistake being high-strung for a lack of intelligence. Wouldn’t you be stressed out if you had to save up enough food to last all winter? Squirrels are incredibly smart critters. So smart in fact that some experts think of them as North America's monkey. Studies have found them to be brilliant problem solvers, who use logic and reasoning to access even the most secure food. According to a 2007 study published in “Animal Behaviour,” they actually create decoy caches by pretend burying food if they think another squirrel is watching. Clever!

With their unfocused stare, the species many think of as “winged-rats” don’t make a stellar first impression as far as intelligence is concerned. Bothersome though they might be to motorists and pedestrians, pigeons are quite smart. Tested by researchers at the University of Tokyo, these birds actually outperformed 3 year old children in certain areas of cognitive development. They were quickly able to distinguish between recorded footage of themselves, and a reflection. Even more impressive, according to research done at the University of Iowa, is they’ve been found capable of organizing images into as many as 16 categories. Time to rethink how we use the term “bird brain”.

Forget the fairy tales and folklore, wolves don’t need to huff and puff or dress up as grandma to find a meal - they’ve got the cunning they need to get the job done without theatrics. As pack animals, wolves demonstrate incredible coordination when hunting. In order to catch their prey, they work together as an organized group, one that is forced to communally make decisions based on the ever-changing variables they face while stalking their prey. While hunting and in research settings, wolves have proven to be incredibly competent problem solvers. Wolves also display incredible social intelligence with their complex hierarchical group structures.

Found in North America, this mammal even looks like a bandit so it’s not that surprising that it’s no stranger to seeking food from the trash or being pests in people’s homes. However, the raccoon also has – perhaps surprisingly - amazing intelligence. Studies have shown that these clever beasts have been able to recall solutions to complex problems and even identify and differentiate different symbols up to three years after learning them. Some experts have also said that raccoons had performed very high on a mammal IQ test. Way to go, you marvelous masked mammals!

#12: Pigs

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Believe it or not, these popular farm animals are actually trainable; in fact, their memories last up to 3 years and they can adjust to certain conditions during survival mode. Pigs also have a good sense of direction and can find their way over long distances. What’s perhaps more surprising is that a pig can also learn to play. A Penn State University professor found that all a pig needed was a joystick, a computer and joystick-oriented video games - and the result was the pig using his snout to move the stick! That’ll do, pig.

Small and resourceful, these rodents are known to adapt very well in changing situations. They also have excellent memories since it’s said that they never forget a certain navigational route. In a 2011 study, rats even showed social intelligence: when presented with food, many of them first liberated the caged rats in the experiments so both of them could eat. In terms of communication, rats can communicate by touch, smell, and even at frequencies that we can’t hear. Rats can also recognize their names and respond when they’re called.

#10: Cats

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We might think of them as our pets, but who’s really in charge in cat-human relationships? Though they’ve been domesticated, cats remain stubborn, independent creatures. They can still be total needy cuddle-monsters, but they aren’t necessarily obedient. One would be remiss to confuse a lack of compliance with a lack of brains though. Cats have great memories, and have been shown, when tested, to be able to recall things from up to 10 years prior. The reality is, their inherent aloofness makes them hard to test accurately, but according to some mid-2010s, albeit limited research, cats test almost as well to dogs.

Whales already have a lot going for them, but we need to add “highly intelligent” to the list. Sperm whales have the largest brain on the planet, and though size doesn’t always matter, in the sperm whale’s case… it likely does. Due to their colossal size and inconvenient habitat, we haven’t had nearly enough opportunity to study sperm, gray and humpback whale species, but we surmise that their vocalizations, or songs, convey dense, multi-layered messages packed with information. In fact, it’s been discovered that whale brains contain spindle neurons, brain cells associated with high-level emotional intelligence, which have only otherwise been found in humans and primates.

#8: Dogs

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There’s a reason people love their dogs - they're loyal and intelligent allies, in tune with their humans. Not only are our four-legged friends incredibly adept at learning tricks, they can also handle more complex tasks like police work and guiding the blind. Of course, intelligence varies across breeds; one of the smartest, border collies, is known for its sheep-herding skills and quick-thinking. They can even open doors and latched gates. Dogs are also incredibly emotionally intelligent, and feel emotions such as anxiety, jealousy, shame or anticipation. Most remarkable however, is their ability to read emotion in the facial expressions of humans - an essential trait in any good friend.

It’s fairly common knowledge that parrots are smart birds that can be trained to say short sentences and to mimic human speech. They’ve even been known to mimic ringing telephones and the sound of garbage trucks backing up. In a 2011 study, African Grey parrots were discovered to have skills of deduction and elimination after undergoing experiments that had them figuring out where food had been hidden, which is a type of intelligence previously only observed in humans and in primates! Of course, their ability to be taught to say more than 100 words is quite impressive as well.

When Jane Goodall first brought the use of tools by primates to public attention in 1960, people couldn’t believe it. But guess what? Octopuses do it too! These oceanic alien-looking creatures have been observed collecting, cleaning out and assembling coconut shells into makeshift shelters. They even build themselves little walls out of stones and debris for protection when inhabiting cave-like spaces. That’s not all though. Cephalopods have a reputation for escaping their enclosures in aquariums, and finding creative ways to do it. If you ask philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith at least, octopuses are intelligent beings that genuinely engage with us.

While technically classified as a “toothed whale”, the orca has proven so intelligent that it deserves its own spot – it’s also the largest of what's known as the oceanic dolphin family. And unlike with many of their larger brethren, it’s a creature we’ve had ample opportunity to study up close. And you know what? They’re damn smart, and probably too smart for captivity. In fact, after the sperm whale, they have the second heaviest brain. Playful, curious problem solvers, killer whales are known to mimic behaviour, and toy with humans, and are creative hunters. Most impressively, according to findings published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, orcas might actually be smart enough to learn to speak dolphin if they’d been previously in contact with those types of aquatic mammals.

It’s said that these crafty birds actually wait patiently for a car to crack the shell of a nut. While that may be true, crows have also proven that they have reasoning abilities rivalling that of a human seven-year-old. Crows are also arguably the only non-primate animals that use tools, for example using sticks and hooks, which they use to take grub out from logs and branches. Found in almost all parts of the world, crows also have the ability to distinguish different people by recognizing facial features. Their cousins in the corvid family, including ravens, jays, and magpies, are also considered devilishly smart.

Earth’s biggest land animal is well-known for having a long memory span and an ability to show empathy towards each other. Elephants also use physical contact and vocal sounds to comfort other elephants when they are distressed. What might be more surprising is that they apparently experience grief when mourning the deaths of other members of their own species. Located in Africa and Asia, elephants also seem to understand human language and even mimic human voices.

With the biggest brains of any other animals of the same size, averaging about 3.5 lbs, it’s not surprising that the bottlenose dolphin is one smart mammal. They show off their cleverness by intentionally making underwater bubble rings to amuse themselves. Studies have shown that they also have self-awareness, as proven by their ability to recognize their reflections in a mirror. Found in temperate and tropical waters around the world, bottlenose dolphins are even known to use marine sponges to avoid injuries and are intelligent problem-solvers.

#1: Great Apes

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When it comes to the great apes, there's a lot of competition for first place - at least, when you exclude our own species. For a long time, scientists assumed that chimps reign supreme. They use tools, have excellent short-term memories, and can even learn sign language. However, some recent studies have handed the crown to orangutans instead. One 2018 study argued that orangutans are the only non-human primates able to “talk” about the past. Then again, bonobos, from the same genus as chimps, have also beaten their cousins in intelligence tests. Oh, and while gorillas might not be first place contenders, they’re no slouches; just look at the famous Koko, whse sign language vocabulary included over 1,000 signs.