Wow, Man Is Not Smartest. When You Look At Other Animals, That Would Seem To Be A Foregone Conclusion!

Researchers Claim Man Is Not The Smartest Animal On Earth

By Brian Anderson on December 11, 2013 Subscribe to Brian Anderson's Feed

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Researchers from the University of Adelaide in Australia make the argument that humans are not at the top of the intellectual pyramid. In a new book called  The Human Dynamic they claim that man is not any smarter than animals, and in many cases dumber.

“For millennia, all kinds of authorities — from religion to eminent scholars — have been repeating the same idea ad nauseam, that humans are exceptional by virtue that they are the smartest in the animal kingdom. However, science tells us that animals can have cognitive faculties that are superior to human beings,” said the book’s co-author Dr. Arthur Saniotis.

What that science is remains to be seen. Clearly mankind has kicked nature’s ass in mastering our domain, but the researchers insist that human intellectual superiority is a man-made fallacy.

“The belief of human cognitive superiority became entrenched in human philosophy and sciences. Even Aristotle, probably the most influential of all thinkers, argued that humans were superior to other animals due to our exclusive ability to reason,” Saniotis said in the statement.

But, reason is only one component of intelligence. Continuing the thought, co-author Dr. Maciej Henneberg says, “The fact that [animals] may not understand us, while we do not understand them, does not mean our ‘intelligences’ are at different levels, they are just of different kinds.”

To bolster their preposterous position, the authors give the following examples of animal “intelligence”:

Some animals leave complex scent markings in their environment to communicate. Humans can’t interpret these markings, but they may be as rich in information as the visual world.

If being able to smell and interpret pee-pee is a sign of intelligence than everyone who rides the New York subway is a genius.

Killer whales share a complex language of their own, and dolphins have individual names based on whistle signals. This means that dolphins have a concept of ‘self’ and special others.

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Interestingly enough humans also have a complex language and often name each other.

Elephants grieve their dead and have excellent memories.

We may occasionally forget to do things on the “honey do” list but we generally have good memories. As for grieving, we have elephants beat by a mile. We even grieve minor celebrities that we’ve never met.

Beavers are able to dam rivers and build underground homes.

We built the Hoover Dam and the Catacombs. Chew on that, beavers.

Weaver birds produce intricate, multi-story nests.

I have no idea what a weaver bird is, but I doubt their nests compare to the Empire State Building.

I get the impression that these researchers want us to believe humans are a bunch of Elmer Fudd’s getting outsmarted by the “wascally wabbits” of the animal kingdom, but they don’t seem to be able to support the theory. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if this were a PETA-funded study trying to lay the groundwork for human rights being extended to all animals. There is already a lawsuit in the US to give these rights to a chimpanzee.

FWI: that’s how the whole Planet Of the Apes thing got started. And we won’t have Charlton Heston around to help us fight those “damn dirty apes.”

Humans have the power to reason and genuflect. We have creativity, imagination, introspection, and empathy. Anything resembling these traits in the animal kingdom is an in-born instinct and not a measure of intelligence. Australians willingly accept draconian gun laws and love Vegimite so maybe animals are smarter than they, but I have to give the nod to Americans. Even with low test scores and too many democrats in power, we’re still smarter than monkeys.