• Question: What are the next 2 intelligent animals after humans. Do we use them to help us in any way. What have we learnt from them. Is there any current research using them.

    Asked by abs10 to Austin, Kirsty, Nicola, Nike, Sarah on 20 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Austin Elliott

      Austin Elliott answered on 20 Jun 2012:


      I would have said that chimpanzees (our closest biological relatives, speaking from an evolutionary perspective) and dolphins are the obvious candidates. And we do use them to help us, and do research involving them. Will add some details when I’ve got a bit more time.

      People have used chimps and dolphins to do things for them, sometimes in ways that might seem a bit cruel, and have also tried to study their intelligence. For instance, before any human astronaut was ever launched into earth orbit, the US launched a chimpanzee called Enos (and several other monkeys). Several navies have trained dolphins to do things like help divers, and even detect undersea mines. And there has been a lot of research into dolphin communication, and even attempts to teach them to recognise human language – see the Wikipedia entry on bottlenose dolphins and the links from it.

      Finally, some of the most interesting research on apes is the stuff trying to see if they can be taught to communicate with humans using signs and even words – details here.

    • Photo: Nike Dattani

      Nike Dattani answered on 20 Jun 2012:


      In order:
      1) Dolphins
      2) Chimpanzees

      Dolphins have humans people that were drowning in the sea.

    • Photo: Kirsty Ross

      Kirsty Ross answered on 20 Jun 2012:


      I’d also go with chimpanzees/gorillas and dolphins. Having said that, it depends on what you define as intelligence. There are lots of species that are very intelligent at certain things, even more so than chimpanzees and dolphins. For example, elephants and whales can communicate over vast distances using sound. Birds such as magpies and rooks can use tools to help them reach food. Dogs can count.

      There was an experiment done using a tall cylinder with a small amount of water and a meal worm in it. Now, magpies love meal worms, but couldn’t reach it with their beak. They were given two piles: one with stones (that would raise the water level) and one with pieces of polystyrene (that would just float). The magpies quickly worked out to use only stones to raise the water and get at the meal worm!

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