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We think we're pretty smart, but are there Einstein's in the natural world?
We're counting down the top 10 animals with the most extreme smarts, and
seeing how they compare to our best brains in the business.
Discover that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, when thinking's
taken to the Most Extreme.
Earth is a planet of extremes, extreme placesâ•” and extreme animals.
But some animals are more extreme than others.
Join us as we countdown to find the most unusual and the most
extraordinary on The Most Extreme.
Dogs are much more than man's best friend.
They're number 10 in the countdown because dogs are smart enough to be
man's best golf buddy.
How many clothes pins in the right hand, hurry up loud.
How many clothes pins in the right hand, hurry up loud.
Hurry up loud.
All right. How many in the left hand, hurry up.
The only thing this dog was counting on was a treat for getting the trick
right.
But scientists have discovered that dogs really do have a basic
mathematical ability, and it's all thanks to their ancestor, the wolf.
Because wolves live in large social groups, they need to know how many
friends and enemies they have in the pack.
That's why their brains are capable of some simple arithmetic.
But when we domesticated the wolf, things changed a little.
All breeds of domestic dog have smaller brains than the wolf, perhaps
because life is so much easier out of the wild.
And when it comes to thinking, sometimes size does matter.
The brain of a beagle weighs less about 70 grams.
Compare that to the size of the organ we do our thinking with.
The 1300 grams of grey wrinkled jelly we call our brain is made up of 100
billion nerve cells called neurons.
And all those neurons firing their electrochemical messages produce
enough tiny burst of electricity to power a light bulb.
Good boy, come, sit, sit nicely, good boy.
Meet Frazer.
His brain may not be very big, but handler Gloria Weeks relies on
Frazer's intelligence and ability to learn.
That's because Frazer is a guide dog.
Acting as Gloria's eyes takes much more than just blind obedience.
Frazer not only has to learn how to follow Gloria's commands, but also
know when to disobey her.
Using a lifesaving skill known as intelligent disobedience, Frazer will
refuse a forward command, if doing so would put Gloria in danger.
It's this creative intelligence that makes guide dogs streets ahead when it
comes to thinking
We're just waking up to the extreme intelligence of the animal that's
number nine in the countdown.
Honey bees are smart even though they've got a brain the size of a
pinhead.
We think we're clever because we invented languages to communicate.
Well, bees are number nine in the countdown because they've also
invented a way of talking to each other about food.
When a scout bee finds a particularly good food source, it races back to the
hive with the news.
The trouble is bees can't speak, and in the darkness of the hive, they
can't see either.
That's why they've come up with a language of their own, and the
language is dance.
Imagine if we had to communicate like the honey bee.
First of all, the scout bee has to attract the attention of her sisters.
When the workers have gathered, she tells them there's food nearby with a
little bee boogie.
Scientists call this repeated pattern of movements, the round dance.
But if the food's a long way off, she's able to tell her sisters the
exact location by breaking out the waggle dance.
The angle of her waggle on the hive's dance floor corresponds to the angle
between her food source and the sun.
And the number of times she shakes her *** indicates just how far away the
food is.
All that remains is to show her sisters just what kind of food they're
looking for.
Hopefully the waggle dance will not be coming to a night club near you.
Scientists are seldom seen in night clubs either, which has left them lots
of time to decode the incredible dance of the honey bee.
And they've even had time to invent a way to talk to bees in their own
language.
Robo-bee may look a little primitive, but this mechanical bee dances
beautifully, especially for a bug with no legs.
But scientists discovered that the most important part of Robo-bee is the
nozzle that delivers a sample of nectar.
Bees got very angry very quickly at any imposter that didn't throw up
during the dance routine.
Thanks to the work of scientists and Robo-bee, we're just starting to
appreciate the incredible intelligence of the brainiest bugs in the
countdown.
But traditional beekeepers have known for a long time that bees are clever.
In fact there was one extreme case where bees seemed to understand our
language.
The story begins in 1961, at the funeral of beekeeper Sam Rogers from
the tiny English village of Myddle.
When he died, his daughter followed the ancient tradition and went around
all of Sam's hives, telling the bees that their master had passed away.
A memorial service for Sam was held the following Sunday, but there were
some surprise guests.
Sam's bees left their hives and traveled straight as an arrow, across
the fields to swarm all over their master's grave.
This apparent demonstration of devotion became world famous, and
forced people to take a new look at these brainy bugs.
We may have outsmarted the first two contenders, but you'd better get your
brain into gear, because coming up are animals so smart, they've really got
something to sing about.
That's next on The Most Extreme.
The next contender in our countdown of extreme smarts has to be clever to
stay one jump ahead of the big bad wolf.
No wonder pigs are number eight in the countdown.
These pigs have made themselves at home with Bob and Connie Precious.
Their house is home to 11 fully housetrained, performing pigs.
And the smartest of them all is Pigstachio.
Okay, Pigstachio, it's paint a picture.
What are we gonna paint today?
I think it would be very appropriate to paint the American flag.
Okay, let's paint. That's great. Up and down. Up and down.
Okay, red on here now. You do
While it may not look much like a flag to us, it's an impressive effort for a
pig.
Very few pigs on the planet paint with such skill, or sign their work with a
hoof print.
But there's one extraordinary human who may not be able to write, but
who's a genius when it comes to drawing.
Meet 11 year old Stephen Wiltshire.
He has a mental age of six and severe learning disabilities.
But he has one extraordinary talent.
He can draw the most incredible pictures.
Stephen is an autistic savant.
He can draw incredibly accurate pictures from memory, and experts have
trouble explaining how he does it.
They suggest that because specific parts of his brain don't work
properly, abilities in other areas have been unlocked.
While Connie Precious may have unlocked the artistic talents of
Pigstachio, wild pigs have to concentrate on using their brain to
find food, and stay out of trouble.
Sometimes it's a case of think fast, or die faster.
Luckily pigs are safe at Pigtasia, which means they're free to explore
new ways of using their brain power and sharp reflexes.
Pigstachio, you're ready.
Get the ball. Get the ball. Bring it up and slam dunk it. Slam dunk it,
Stachio
We've seen precious pigs, boogieing bees and gifted guides.
But don't touch that dial because we're calling on another super smart
animal, next on The Most Extreme.
Galloping in to number seven in our countdown of extreme smarts is the
horse.
This horse is about to begin his daily workout.
But the only muscle he's exercising is his brain because he's being tested at
the Equine Research Foundation in Aptos, California.
So how do you find out what goes on inside a horse's head?
Researchers have developed this system to discover if he can understand
concepts such as large and small.
Choose the small symbol and you get a tasty treat.
This may look like a game, but researchers are discovering that
horses are smarter than we thought.
It seems that horses are thinking creatures that respond best to humans
who acknowledge their minds and emotions.
But one doctor already knew that.
Who needs a complex system of symbols if you're Dr. Dolittle?
I could talk to the animals.
Back at the Equine Research Foundation they can talk to the animals with sign
language.
It may not be a great conversation, but by discovering how horses learn,
researchers are doing a lot to narrow the communication gap.
In northern Japan, you have to be smart to survive the winter.
And in this forest, animals don't get any smarter than the snow monkey.
It's number six in the countdown because just like humans, snow monkeys
are famous for their ability to learn.
Imagine if you were stuck in the forest and there was a blizzard
coming.
Would you find shelter in a tree, or do the intelligent thing, and head to
the bottom of the hill for a nice hot bath.
Thirty years ago, this female snow monkey called Tokeewa, is thought to
have seen people bathing in these hot pools.
Unlike any monkey before her, the young Tokeewa decided to join them.
Now the whole troop has learned to keep warm in the pool, in a classic
case of monkey see, monkey do.
It's this giant intellectual leap that pushed the snow monkey to number six
in the countdown.
After all, it's not easy coming up with totally original ideas, even if
you're the most famous thinker in the world.
In Germany in the late 1800s, one couple feared their child may have
been mentally challenged because he didn't speak until he was three.
He did spend a lot of time building with blocks, and spent hours and hours
solving puzzles.
Later in life he'd say: "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay
with problems longer." That problem child was none other than Albert
Einstein.
Who, relatively speaking, had the most brilliant mind of the 20th century?
Snow monkeys are number six in our countdown because, just like Einstein,
they can occasionally come up with amazing conceptual leaps.
Even if sometimes, youngsters can get a little too clever for their own
good.
But if there's one thing a snow monkey likes more than a hot bath, it's being
groomed.
Grooming is not only the social glue that binds the troop together, but
it's a practical way of getting rid of parasites, like lice and ticks.
And some monkeys like grooming so much, they get a little carried away.
Perhaps the expanse of fur on a deer is irresistible for monkeys that love
to groom.
But there's one super smart monkey that's found another use for the ticks
it finds on deer.
If you'd like to be groomed yourself, but you don't have any ticks of your
own, you can borrow some.
This monkey has learned that by adopting a deer tick, he can give his
friends hours of fun combing through his fur.
Even though the snow monkey's snow fool, it's still only number six in
our countdown of extreme smarts.
For coming up is an animal that goes nuts when it gets the green light, and
alien intelligences that look out of this world.
That's next on The Most Extreme.
Of all the birds in the world, the ones that scare us the most are crows
and ravens.
For centuries we've associated them with darkness and death.
But could the real reason for our distrust be due to their extreme
intelligence?
Crows are number five in the countdown because they're smart enough to use
our own technology to crack some tricky problems.
To see these great minds at work, you just have to travel to a university
campus in Japan.
This crow likes eating walnuts.
But breaking open the hard shell's a real problem.
The crow's figured out how to use some four wheeled nut-crackers.
The crow is number five in the countdown because it's clever enough
to drop its dinner on a crosswalk.
Only when it gets the green light will it safely secure its snack.
But crows aren't the only creatures with calculating minds.
Meet human calculator, Rudiger Gamm.
He's taught himself how to carry out stupendous calculations in his head.
Three hundred sixty two million, seven hundred ninety seven thousand, fifty
six.
To try and find out how Rudiger could make such extraordinary calculations,
scientists put him through a brain scanner.
They compared his scan to those of people with average mathematical
ability.
When calculating, most people use the parts of the brain shown in red.
But Rudiger uses the extra areas marked in green.
He's using the parts of the brain that most of us reserve for visualization
and long term memory.
What's 99 to the power of 14?
When I calculate I see these numbers like in a computer screen.
I visualize the numbers and with these numbers I can calculate.
868745671.
Our next contender is definitely well armed and dangerous.
It may look terrifying, but the octopus isn't attacking the diver,
it's just collecting data.
That's because each tentacle has a mind of its own, and every sucker can
taste and touch.
By covering the diver in this sensitive embrace, the octopus is just
trying to learn as much as it can.
It's number four in the countdown because its central nervous system is
so big and so complex, it rivals that of many birds and fish.
In fact the octopus is one of the fastest learners in the world.
It has to be according to Dr. Carol Hopper from the Waikiki Aquarium:
Octopuses, they're incredibly bright.
Consider this, here's an animal that may have a life span as short as 12 to
16 months.
When it hatches there's no parents to teach it, it has to learn everything
on its own, how to hunt, how to avoid predators, how to control the
thousands of color cells in its skin, the 8 arms and all of the sensory
structures, that all has to be integrated by the brain.
That's an amazing amount of work to do, of learning to do in such a short
time.
The baby octopus may be a quick learner but measuring its intelligence
is difficult.
If it was a human, we could use an IQ test.
And if it scored well, it could become a member of a very special club.
More than 48,000 Americans belong to Mensa, a club that celebrates the
cerebral.
You need an above average IQ just to get in the door.
To join famous smart people like actress Geena Davis and author Isaac
Asimov, you have to score in the top 2% of the general population on a
standardized intelligence test.
Thank you for coming to Mensa supervised test session.
To get into Mensa, you need an IQ of at least 130.
While only one in fifty Americans has what it takes, there are good reasons
for wanting to join according Mensa's Marla Whipple.
There are several reasons why people join Mensa.
One is for the social interaction to be around other people who get their
jokes.
One is for intellectual stimulation to be with people who they can talk about
ideas and thoughts that they don't normally have a chance to talk about
and another is to attend the intellectual activities and events
that Mensa has.
So is it possible to design a Mensa test for an octopus?
All you need is a tasty treat placed inside a glass bottle.
Seal it with a cork and give it to a hungry eight armed genius.
The octopus may be the mollusc equivalent of a Mensa member, but it's
still not the smartest animal in the sea.
So far it's been a battle of wits between intelligent octopi, clever
crows, and wise monkeys.
But stay tuned, because coming up is an animal that really gives us an
earful.
That's next on The Most Extreme.
Diving in to number three in our countdown of extreme smarts is the
dolphin.
Off the coast of Brazil, the dolphin's big brain brings it up close and
personal with fishermen.
But the catch of the day isn't dolphin.
It's mullet that the dolphins have herded close to shore.
Like underwater sheep dogs, the dolphins even signal to the fishermen
when to cast their nets.
And in return, the dolphins get to eat the mullet missed by the net.
It's a really clever trick that humans and dolphins have been practicing in
Brazil for several hundred years.
But learning this behavior is no problem for the animal with the
closest thing to human intelligence in the sea.
Like us dolphins are highly sociable animals.
They learn by playing games, and one of their most popular sports is
seaweed soccer.
Scientists working with dolphins have discovered that these skilful swimmers
are so smart, they may even be able to recognize themselves as individuals.
This kind of intelligence is only seen in great apes and humans.
But it isn't easy trying to figure out just how smart dolphins are.
In the past, some people have tried to measure intelligence by taking a close
look at the skull.
Back in 1798, a Viennese physician came up with the pseudoscientific idea
that you could read a human's personality from feeling bumps on the
skull.
It was called phrenology and became hugely popular around the world.
It was said that if phrenologist felt the bumps on the head of a young man
working in a grocery store.
The phrenologist told the man he was in the wrong business, he should get
out of the store and do something mechanical.
The young man's name was Thomas Edison.
Phrenology wouldn't be much use on dolphins because their brains are so
different to ours.
That's because the bulk of their brain is devoted to processing sound waves.
These two tanks are connected with hydrophones and speakers.
Listen to this exchange between Doris, a bottlenose female in one tank, and
Dash a bottlenose male in the other.
Scientists have been keeping records on whether the male or female dolphin
talks more.
Their reports show that the female Doris is by far the gabbiest.
Today scientists believe that dolphins are making all that noise not to talk,
but to hunt.
The dolphin actually makes far more noises than we can hear.
It fires off ultrasonic clicks and whistles like a submarine using sonar.
By listening to the echoes of these ultrasonic sound waves, it can build
up a sonar picture of the world around it.
The beauty of ultrasound is that when it contacts a fish, some of the
ultrasonic waves can pass right through the skin.
The beam may then reflect back off the bones or guts, resulting in a number
of different echoes.
Some scientists believe that these echoes are processed in the dolphin's
brain to form a 3D image of the fish.
Which explains why the dolphin's brain is so big.
It takes a lot of brain power to be able to hunt by ultrasound.
It's feeding time at the Honolulu Zoo, but this is no ordinary dinner party.
Part of the zoo's enrichment program is to turn lunchtime into a lesson in
problem solving.
But number two in the countdown definitely won't starve.
For chimpanzees can sometimes be just as smart as us.
But that's hardly surprising given that we share up to 98% of our genetic
material.
To see just how similar our brains are, you just have to look at our
babies.
Just like a human infant, a new-born chimp learns to recognize its
caregiver's voice and responds with a look and a smile.
When they're three months old, both human and chimp babies will analyze
new objects by placing them in their sensitive mouths.
After six months, the chimpanzee is actually more aware of its environment
than its human counterpart.
It's only when they get to their first birthday that the chimpanzee starts
getting left behind in the race for human consciousness.
Most chimpanzees will be lucky to reach the intellect of a 4 year old
human.
Hardly surprising since even a 4 year old has a brain three times the size
of a chimp.
But chimpanzees are still clever enough to copy the most important
human skill of all, they make tools.
Wild chimpanzees produce over 20 different types of tools.
This hammer and anvil may look simple to us, but it can take up to six years
to develop the proper technique.
That's about the same time it takes us to go through graduate school.
But one chimp is so smart, he goes to university.
Okay, Kanzi is ready.
Kanzi is at Georgia State University, and while he may never graduate, he is
clever enough to understand and respond to human language using signs
on a special keyboard.
Find Austin, Austin.
Austin. Good job.
So having found a way to communicate, what does a chimpanzee like to talk
about?
Well, according to his researcher buddies, Kanzi's favorite subjects
center around games and food.
Kanzi may be top of his class, but he's still only number two on the
countdown of extreme smarts.
We've seen the nine contenders.
They're the best of the best.
Only one animal is a more extreme thinking machine.
It's number one and it's coming up next on The Most Extreme.
Soaring in to number one in our countdown of extreme smarts is the
parrot.
This is a kea, a mountain parrot that lives in the Southern Alps of New
Zealand.
So what's so smart about this bird?
As part of an international test of animal IQ, the kea was challenged with
a seven stage puzzle.
To get the food, it had to pull levers, push buttons, turn handles,
and pull out a wooden cart.
Up against the best brains in the animal kingdom, the parrot couldn't
wait to get started.
In little over a minute the parrot won the food, and the competition.
In these mountains, it's the kea's playful curiosity that gives them the
edge.
That's how they discovered that shearwater burrows contain nutritious
meals.
Unfortunately, a young kea also has to learn that making an omelet isn't as
easy as it looks.
Thanks to a remarkable brain and a beak like a Swiss army knife, the kea
can crack even this puzzle.
But when it comes to smart parrots, one really stands out from the flock.
Meet Alex, the resident birdbrain at the University of Arizona where he's
worked with Dr Irene Pepperberg for more than 20 years.
How many green block?
Four.
Good boy.
What matter?
Paper.
Paper, good boy.
Okay, what matter?
Wool.
Wool, very good boy.
This remarkably clever parrot is estimated to have the problem solving
skills of a 6 year old child.
And all this with a brain the size of a walnut.
That's why the parrot is number one in our countdown of extreme smarts.
For when it comes to thinking, the parrot really is The Most Extreme.