World's Smartest Animals

Eight-Legged Problem Solvers

An octopus does not just have one brain. It has a central brain between its eyes, plus a mini-brain in each of its eight arms. This distributed brainpower lets them untie knots, unscrew childproof jars, and escape from high-security aquarium tanks. One mischievous octopus in Germany figured out how to turn off the lights in its laboratory. It crawled to the top of its tank and squirted a stream of water directly at the bright spotlight, short-circuiting the power grid because it hated the glare. It did this multiple times, leaving the scientists in the dark.

Feathered Engineers

Crows are the master toolmakers of the sky. If a crow wants a juicy beetle grub hiding inside a narrow hole, it will find a twig, strip off the leaves, bend the tip with its beak to make a hook, and fish the grub out. A crow’s brain is also built for long-term memory. Crows recognize individual human faces. If you wear a mask and upset a crow, that bird will remember you. It will also teach its friends and children what you look like. Years later, the entire local flock will screech at you the moment you step outside in that same mask.

The Chimpanzee Speed Run

Humans might build spaceships, but chimpanzees beat us at quick-memory games. At a university in Japan, scientists trained young chimps to play a fast-paced touch-screen game. The numbers one through nine flashed randomly on a screen for less than a quarter of a second—faster than the blink of an eye—before turning into blank gray squares. The chimps had to tap the squares in correct numerical order. They failed almost never. When human adults tried the exact same game, they failed repeatedly because their brains could not capture the visual map faster than a camera shutter clicks.