Not to be one of those people who anthropomorphizes everything like it's a Disney movie, but I really do think we've only scratched the surface of understanding just how smart a lot of animals are.
Sounds like it knew exactly what those items were for, probably from watching other zoo-goers over the years.
I feel like anyone who had had a particularly intuitive dog might have an idea, but I agree. Animals , especially social ones, are way smarter than we think.
My incredibly derpy husky/German shepherd mix knows what day of the week it is, if it's Saturday and I grab my keys and put my shoes on he hops in my car, if it's the work week he goes to the dog run. I love how excited he gets when he realises it's my day off
Oir son still lives at home, and usually gets home from work around 2:30pm. About 15 min before I notice him looking out the front door then going to the garage entrance, back and forth until he hears the garage door open to greet my son. He definitely has a sense of time.
There's a story about some sharks in the Caribbean who figured out that divers with certain pieces of gear (typically polespears) were looking for invasive lionfish. The divers of course sometimes fed the sharks some of the lionfish so they stuck around the dive groups.
Then the divers found that the sharks started to tap the polespears with their noses/heads and then swim to the reefs. When they looked at where the sharks went, it turned out that the sharks were VERY good at finding the lionfish and were signalling to the divers there was a lionfish in a specific place and then telling them to come and spear it, with the hope that the diver then gave them some of the fish.
Dolphins in Brazil have been famous for doing similar- they drive fish into shore where the fishermen wait along the shore in lines with long nets. They catch what swims into the nets trying to escape from the dolphins and then sort the fish for size/type. Of course the dolphins wait and anything that is too small or the wrong sort gets thrown back into the water and they help themselves.
Oh wow, that's incredible. It sucks they dwindled the big whales numbers down, but its super cool to see that the orcas kept helping them for the tongues and lips of the big whales. I mean, ew. But cool. Thank u so much for sharing.
I have pet rats & obviously we know they are smart, but I read that they struggle, at least when young, to conceive of us as a whole being. I mean, we are massive to them! So I don't think they always quite get that our face is our face etc. Plus they aren't visual creatures & have poor eyesight. I hold my rats up to my face occasionally & look them in the eyes & while they are younger they just wriggle to get down, no interest. But my rat Moog, and one I have at the moment, Eek, both had this epiphany seemingly where they realised, and they look me back in the eyes. Moog is a people-rat so he would do it for ages, Eek is too busy so he will do it for a bit then ask to get down. For something so small to suddenly realise you have eyes too & you are looking at them is pretty cool, a bit like the mirror test I think (which apparently they don't pass). Oh, it was so funny the second time I did it to Moog, I stuck my tongue out & he was so startled he bit it 😆🤣
I had a really smart dog when I was growing up and she reminded me of Oy in The Dark Tower. She didn't talk but I never doubted she understood every word I said.
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u/yet-again-temporary Mar 03 '25
Not to be one of those people who anthropomorphizes everything like it's a Disney movie, but I really do think we've only scratched the surface of understanding just how smart a lot of animals are.
Sounds like it knew exactly what those items were for, probably from watching other zoo-goers over the years.