Listening 5 – Listen for specific words

Throughout history, humans have pondered animal intelligence and especially the possibility of consciousness in species. Previously an animal’s brain size was often used to determine its for intelligence, but a better indicator of intelligence is brain complexity. Experiments are also used to animals’ ability to learn, memorize, solve problems, and communicate.

Dolphins are one of the sea creatures. In the wild, dolphins exhibit complex play behavior involving making and playing with elaborate rings of bubbles in . They also communicate through a “language” of clicks and whistles, using distinctive signals to and call each other.

One incredible example of dolphin cleverness was demonstrated in a captive environment. In the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, the dolphins are rewarded for their own tank clean. They do this by retrieving rubbish and bringing it to a keeper, receiving a fish as a reward. One dolphin the ability to plan for the future – instead of delivering the trash right away, she started hoarding it under a at the bottom of the pool. Then, she would bring it up one small piece at a time whenever she wanted a fish.

The elephant is another highly intelligent animal – in fact, some parts of an elephant’s brain are more complex than our own. Research in has shown that elephants have the ability to count and even handle rudimentary arithmetic. There have been numerous of elephants’ problem-solving abilities, such as an elephant in a zoo in Asia that worked out how to unlock the shackles on her – and even helped other elephants escape!

Elephants are incredibly altruistic and often give aid to other species in need. In India, an elephant was to help in a construction project by lifting logs and placing them into holes in the ground. At one point, it refused to insert a log into a hole – and when the supervisor went to , he found a dog sleeping at the bottom of the hole. The elephant would only insert the log after the dog had been removed.

Finally, elephants are the only species besides humans to have a recognizable ritual around death. They have been observed mourning and the body of a dead elephant with dirt and leaves. Elephants show strong interest in the of their own kind, and even visit “elephant graveyards.”

Chimpanzees, our close genetic relatives, also demonstrate remarkable intelligence. They can make and use tools – for example, using rocks as hammers to crack open nuts, and using sticks to extract termites from their nests. Chimps can also to use sign language to communicate with their human trainers, although their vocabulary is limited and they can only express simple .

In some memory tasks, chimpanzees actually outperform humans. In one experiment, the numbers one through nine appeared on a computer in random positions. The numbers were only visible for about a second, and then disappeared. Chimps were able to place all the numbers back in the correct positions with a degree of accuracy, whereas humans who took the test could remember no more than a few.

Perhaps the most interesting finding is that chimps appear to enjoy an intellectual . During an experiment in London, chimps voluntarily worked on puzzles of increasing difficulty, even when they did not receive a reward for them. This suggests that they enjoy solving brain teasers for , just as humans do.