How exactly do scientists measure this intelligence across different species? What methods, tests, or observations do researchers use to assess the cognitive abilities of animals? And especially I am curious about how do they range animals according to their IQ level? How can one compare raccoons (with their physical ability to do something using their fingers) and, for example, pigs?
In: Planetary Science
There’s no single rubric for measuring animal intelligence because they’ve all evolved their own specialized intelligence for their own purposes.
A scarlet macaw can remember many dozens of different individual bird calls that it uses to identify specific birds by “name” and gossip with them when they’re making a tremendous racket up in a banana tree. They’re very social animals and have a high level of socialization-specific intelligence. They can remember individuals, learn a large vocabulary, reproduce sounds they hear, and convey information to others.
A falcon doesn’t do this. It’s a solitary predator that spends its time hunting and tracking prey. It’s evolved an incredible visual processing system that lets it pinpoint a tiny rodent from hundreds of feet away and then enter a controlled dive to pick it off.
The falcon doesn’t chat up the gang around the ol’ banana bunch and the macaw can’t bullseye a field mouse at 130mph, but they’re both very good at what they do.
We try to compare the problem solving skills of different species to gauge their relative intelligence, but even designing a “problem” that both a crow and a boa constrictor might attempt to solve is a difficult question. Crows spend all day dicking around with nut shells and roadkill so they’re always eager to fiddle with a food box, but an ambush predator has little tolerance for that and won’t even bother.
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