The Smartest Animals In The World

It’s almost impossible to come up with a definitive, ranked list of the smartest animals in the world, not least because scientists don’t agree on a single, specific definition of intelligence, or how to measure it.

All animals – including humans – have evolved their cognitive abilities to succeed in their natural habitat. For human beings, we use many indicators of intelligence – self-awareness, creativity, abstract thinking, cooperation, altruism, problem-solving, maths skills, social learning, language and communication skills, and many more.

When measuring animal intelligence scientists tend to look at similar indicators, which possibly underestimates animal intelligence by relying too much on human-centric testing. It’s easy to recognize the traditional human signs of intelligence in great apes with their tool use and communication skills, but a wide range of non-primate species have also been observed to display traits of intelligence.

Measuring animal intelligence can be problematic, and comparing intelligence across the animal kingdom is a tricky task, as tests are usually created for one specific species and hard to reuse reliably across species.