Jake Scardigli
Psychology
Professor Apostol
11/11/18
How Smart Are Animals?
The video I watched was called “How Smart are Animals” with Neil DeGrass
Tyson. It is an educational video on PBS that is all about different types of animals and
how we may have underestimated how smart these animals really are. They use examples
of many different animals and many different skills that have been taught.
This video is about how animals learn and how much they can learn. Examples of
the first dog that was a sheep terrier and knew the names of over a thousand toys that his
owner has collected over many years. I think it was insane how he knew that many toys
all by their names. Neil collected a sample size of the toys, and he laid them all down
behind the couch he was sitting on and would say “Chaser go find ___” and he did this
with 10 toys and Chaser grabbed every correct toy and he did it without hesitation too. It
makes me wonder if I could teach my dog any of this? I would think so and it must take a
lot of work and time.
The second animal they used was a dolphin. This is an animal I always thought
was really smart. I have been to sea world before and I saw them practically doing
whatever the animal keepers wanted them to do and it was almost like they were their
dogs or kids the way they listened to them. Some of the things I watched on this video
though was more impressive than what I saw at sea world. I think sea world is really
wrong too and I think its awesome how they had an outdoor barrier for these dolphins so
that they knew where they were and they could still adapt to humans and live in the wild.
The fact that, that man, hid a ring under the sand in a random spot in the ocean and the
dolphin dives down and he starts making clicking noises to wait until a ring shaped figure
bounces of it back so he can find it. I don’t even understand how a dolphin can do that
which is crazy that they can do stuff with their mind that humans can’t.
The only animal that was not a mammal that they tested intelligence for was an
octopus. They said the octopus has the largest brain of all non-mammals. They can teach
themselves how to fix problems which is extremely rare amongst all animals, not just
non-mammals. Typically, animals learn from seeing someone, or something, else do it
and they try to mimic the behavior. But octopus can figure this stuff out on their own
which is pretty fascinating. Octopus not only use their brain for problem solving and
intelligence but they use their brain power to camouflage into what they see around them.
The thing I will remember most would honestly be the first experiment they did
with the dog, Chaser. I just found it insane that that huge stack of toys all had their own
name and that Chaser knew a name to all of them. I can also relate to this because my dog
knows one toy he has. Whenever someone in my family says “Cash, wheres your Kong?’
he knows exactly which toy we are talking about and he goes and finds it and we fill it
with peanut butter and he loves it. We think that he knows this toy the best because every
time we say it and he finds it himself, we fill it with peanut butter so it is probably his
favorite toy and the most rewarding one.
When the dolphins were swimming in the ocean and given a task what was it?
a. Learn to plan before the experiment
b. Work as a unit
c. Find a weight and bring it to the surface together
d. All the above
Ans. D.