Human beings tend to be dismissive of this world, and our collective disregard of most of the other life on it, at least based on our actions. We seem to act like we truly feel we own it, as opposed to belonging to it, being a part of it, and thus sharing it with other life forms. That, of course, includes animals, which many of us tend to dismiss as dumb.
In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. I remember reading a book by Daniel Quinn once, where he explained how an animal relies on all sorts of senses to inform it of things that we humans are largely blind and deaf to. They may know, for example, how a beetle's tracks will reveal how long ago it was there, how it might know if that beetle is injured or now, what direction it is going, and on and on. Things that we human beings would not be able to know.
We only view our knowledge and base our perceptions of intelligence on this, but there certainly are other forms of intelligence. But if the electricity were suddenly to go out tomorrow, and we lost access to all of our modern conveniences and had to actually use other skills in a world turned much more primitive, the same animals that we often dismiss as dumb would be far smarter and more capable of surviving - and indeed, perhaps thriving - in such a world, while our own survival skills would be largely in doubt.
So it seemed like this link was worth sharing, if only to put such things into perspective, and challenge our long-held, and overly convenient and rarely challenged, assumption of superior intelligence.
Enjoy!
How Intelligence Is Measured In The Animal Kingdom As understandings of human intelligence evolve, so, too, do understandings of animal intelligence. By Conor Feehly, Jan 17, 2023:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/how-intelligence-is-measured-in-the-animal-kingdom?utm_campaign=organicsocial&utm_content=as_understandings_of_huma&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR25wM7wnllZ7Dpe0Um3NWTMo0iiuNGnyTUgTxITa-Tr6eNg1lzmhhGrWF8
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