I suppose that's debateable, but I read that some animals are a lot more intelligent than people. Such as dolphins.

did you see that show they aired on one of those science channels about the intelligence of the domestic dog? dogs can understand HUNDREDS of words and learn intuitively. dogs also can read human behaviors better than our closest genetic relatives, chimps and gorillas, can.

they even had a segment on a dogs that after being adopted after being abandoned and emotionally scarred made patterns with his dog toys ranging from triangles, circles, parallel lines, sorting by type, or setting them all right side up or upside down. he even did stuff like, after the first time he allowed his new owner to put her arm around him, set two of his toy animals down so one had its arm around the other.

it was VERY interesting.

as for the recent mention of dolphins... they are intelligent, perhaps as intelligent as us. and like some humans some dolphins get a thrill out of killing things for no reason other than the fun of it. that's something not common in the animal world, limited only to the more intelligent animals out there. sure, some carnivores get caught up in the hunt if there's a chance to kill large numbers at one time, but they don't actively go out to kill for pleasure. some dolphins are known to do that.

I will make a point that everyone should already know by now, humans are animals and are smart in their own way. If evolution is actually true and how we humans evolved in monkeys really prove that we are animals. But we human can act as wild as an animal depending on the situation. People just have a larger brain than some animals, but animals have a 6th sense that many humans don't have. The way they behave and a human is completely different. But the way I see things is that it depends on the thing whether or not it wants to be intelligent or not. Someone you might consider smart is probably because they put the effort to be smart, people who aren't is because they are not putting the effort into it. Animals learn things depending on the wild, they also like us human learn from experience. Even if we have our own written and spoken language, it's because someone took the time to go make one. I hope this helps with what you think, this is just something simple that I explained, could be much longer and confusing, but I hope it's not.

I believe that intelligence is relative, however, I think we're all just a little naive. xD

I know that my puppy is quite afraid of my mop, my vacuum, and several other home cleansing tools. xD

Hell no. We're retarded and don't really fit in the web of life anymore.

I think this is a very tricky question that isn't easily answered... But if it comes down to it humans are the superior race even though the majority these days are idiots, you still have to remember that hand full that devote their lives to science and such. Animals are capable of learning the deep concepts that we are today. At one point we did have those instincts that animals have, but of course over the years and evolutions of life we've lost them due to technologies that rot our brains out. So we've tried to develop machines to predict the things we no longer can like the weather and such. When we run into a bump in life that could be crossed a little easier we create a new mechanism to enhance our own laziness, but ah what of those that create these? They must be intelligent are they? Well if you test an animal on our standards of intelligence it is actually proven that large birds (Macaws, African Greys and such) are the most intelligent animal... that is on our standards. They can learn as much as a 5-7 year old, and think about it, that is a LOT for a brain the size of a WALNUT! God I love Birds.... ^^Don't mind this rant.

It's not a matter of who's smarter than the other, it's a matter of who would survive. Humans pretty much lost their natural abilities to survive in a natural type environment if they're aided by technology. Animals were never introduced to things to make their lives easier so they do have survival skills and if they don't have it, they die.

If humans weren't pampered and actually lived like nature intended them to then there would be no problem with them living a natural life. If you take an animal and raise it in captivity it looses its ability to survive in the wild, much like people have. I think that if people are forced to survive in the wild, their natural survival skills would kick in. I'm not saying they would know what to eat and things like that, but they would at least try to survive unless there's something wrong with them.

Well, animals live on instinct. They do things the way they do because that is how their species have been doing it for hundreds of years and they are born with the instinct to follow.

People have instincts too, but people branch out on thought. They experiment, they create, they question. That's the big one there: they question.

I don't think I could say one is smarter than the other. They all still exist, humans and animals, so obviously we're all doing something right.

Judging by cognitive abilities, humans are the smartest animal on Earth to the best of our knowledge, closely followed by animals like dolphins and other apes.

We are just built that way. Our brain to body ratio is just bigger. It's a biological fact.

Now, I am not discounting the importance of the skills of other animals. However, survival skills =/= intelligence. An predator will know how to find its prey, but those are skills for survival. Humans are currently beyond survival. Obviously this has not made humans any less short sighted, selfish, or foolish in general.

I think that animals are smarter than humans and I've always thought that... And I really don't know why

Not to start a big quote tree or anything but the nasty things that we as humans do are not the only traits that define us. We are also very capable of compassion. I think the cynics like to point out that we're the only ones that hate and murder members of our own species... clearly they haven't seen chimpanzee territorialism, where they'd actually kill and cannibalize members of their own species (particularly baby chimps) in wars over territory. Or what about predators simply fighting and competing against each other because there's no longer enough food to go around in their given environment?

What I'm trying to get at is maybe it IS a double edged sword that we've become more rational beings; it's led to the development of a concentrated and sophisticated emergence of hatred. But the opposite is true too; we also have the potential for equal amounts of compassion.

Now being more rational beings doesn't necessarily make us better, it just means that the range of thoughts and emotions we can experience is greater, for better or worse.

Depends on what you consider smart. Some would say a college graduate should be smart having made it through at least four years of school, but then, if you put them in the "real world" all those book smarts do not guarentee them a good job, or the ability to handle social situations. The same as someoen with common sense might not be able to work complex math problems. Smart is a relative term and the idea that one species is "superior" to all the others sounds a little too much like the ideas behind racism, sexism and bigotry. Those who are "superior" have just put themselve at the top of the hill, kicking down anyone who gets in their way. Sure, mankind can control (to an extent) other animals, cage them up, kill them as we please, but we also are responsible for pulluting the planet, destroying the water and air and ozone. How "smart" is that superiority? But then, the rest of the animal kingdom doesn't seem able to stop us either, so their not particularly smart in that respect. In that situation, the only "smart" ones are the microscopic viruses and bacteria that are developing too quickly for our antibiotics and medicines to keep up, the anti-biotic-resistant infections that kill many before we find some sort of medivine that can wipe them out, the cancers that kill millions every year with no cure in sight. Seems to me, the smallest of creatures are the "smartest" though really, it all comes down to survival of the fittest.

I don't think so, animals have their ways of understanding things like humans have theirs, getting an animal to walk on a treadmill would be pretty difficult but a 7 year old boy/girl wouldn't have trouble with it.

*preens regally in agreement with Nissa*