Gerry canavan smartest animals

Measuring animal intelligence is tricky.

Gerry Canavan.

“Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth.” The Handbook of Comics and Thematic Title: “The Lives of Animals” (Spring , Spring ).

SFFTV is edited by Gerry Canavan (Marquette University), Alison Sperling (Florida State University), and Ida Yoshinaga (George Institute of Technology).

“The Aliens in 'Arrival' Look like Octopuses Because Humans Think Cephalopods Are Both Scary and Smart.” Quartz.

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As humans, we can only compare the smarts of other creatures with our own — an inherently biased benchmark.

"Asking which species is smarter is like asking if a hammer is a better tool than a screwdriver," Brian Hare, founder and director of Duke University's Canine Cognition Center, told PBS in 2018.

"Each tool is designed for a specific problem, so of course it depends on the problem we are trying to solve."

Scientists don't have a standard definition or test for "intelligence." Some look at tool use, brain-to-body ratios, brain sizes, problem-solving abilities or self-awareness, but whether these measures really capture animal intellect is debatable.

Still, some animals show remarkable cognitive abilities that sometimes rival our own.

Here are 32 of the smartest animals on the planet.

Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus) are Homo sapiens' closest relativ