Top 30 Smartest Animals in the World

There are several reasons humans are highly intelligent, including our problem-solving skills and large prefrontal cortex. A 2022 study states that a set of interconnected factors worked together to drive the evolution of the brain, making humans smarter than other animals. “The human brain leverages synergistic information to a greater extent than nonhuman primates, with high-synergy association cortices exhibiting the highest degree of evolutionary cortical expansion,” according to the research.

Humans also have the capacity for complex language, which allows us to communicate abstract ideas and transmit knowledge.

The impressive intellectual abilities of this primate have long fascinated humans. Chimpanzees can learn sign language to communicate with humans and remember the name sign for individuals they have not seen for several years. Chimps can also recognize themselves in mirrors and show signs of caring and mourning.

But perhaps the most amazing feature of the chimpanzee is its ability to use symbols for objects and combine the symbols in a sequence to convey a complex idea. Such intellectual gifts might help maintain this animal's complex social groups, where they form strong bonds and observe elaborate hierarchical structures.

In the wild, chimps can make spears for hunting, use tools to crack open nuts and remove termites from logs. They are capable of advanced problem-solving, and they know when they've aced a test. Not too impressed? Then, here's a video of chimps outperforming humans at a memory task.

Have you ever wondered why dolphins and killer whales are the star attraction at most aquariums? It's because they're smarter than most other creatures.

"They have culture, they have tools, they have complex societies," Neuroscientist Lori Marino tells Discover Magazine. “These animals are very much like us because of their social complexities, their behavior, their level of self-awareness."

Like many of the most intelligent animals on Earth, dolphin females remain with their young for several years, teaching them all the tricks of the dolphin trade. Dolphins use tools in their natural environment and can learn an impressive array of behavioral commands by human trainers. In fact, The U.S. Navy trained bottlenose dolphins to find explosive mines underwater.

A dolphin's brain is four to five times larger than expected for their body size. They can recognize themselves in a mirror and comprehend and follow instructions. They also have sonar built into their DNA.

The great apes, with whom we share over 96 percent of the same DNA, are among the smartest creatures. Orangutans stand out as being especially gifted in the brains department. In fact, they can weigh costs and benefits when exchanging goods, similar to humans.

They can also become famed escape artists. Fu Manchu, an orangutan at the Omaha Zoo, continued to escape from his enclosure. When zookeepers installed cameras, they learned he had learned to pick a lock and kept the key hidden.

Orangutans have a strong culture and system of communication and can use tools in the wild. In one study, adult orangutans performed better than human children at making and using tools.

These intelligent animals live in widely scattered communities and form strong social bonds, which may be the key to their advanced cognitive skills. Females remain with their young for many years, teaching them all they need to survive in the forest. Unfortunately, there are barely 100,000 orangutans, a critically endangered species, left in the world.

The first thing you might notice when you see an elephant is their enormous size. But contrary to popular perception, elephants are more than just lumbering giants. In fact, elephants are quite elegant, cultured, curious and have good memories. So much so, they can recognize up to 30 relatives from their urine scents — proving useful for elephants to keep track of one another.

They can clean their food and use tools in various ways in the wild and follow human commands in captivity. Elephants are also extremely caring and empathetic to other members of their group and to other species, which is considered a highly advanced form of intelligence. They thrive as a team.

"Being part of an elephant family is all about unity and working together for the greater good,” says Joyce Poole, co-founder of ElephantVoices, to Scientific American. “When they are getting ready to do a group charge, for example, they all look to one another: ‘Are we all together? Are we ready to do this?’ When they succeed, they have an enormous celebration, trumpeting, rumbling, lifting their heads high, clanking tusks together, intertwining their trunks.”

Elephants have the largest brain among land animals — three times larger than the human brain — weighing a hefty 10.5 pounds (4.7 kilograms) for an adult. Its brain contains 257 billion neurons, which is also three times more than the average human brain. Elephants can recognize themselves in mirrors and show signs of grief over their dead relatives.

Crossing the street against traffic may be called "jay-walking," but jays and other members of the crow family understand better than some humans the importance of waiting for the light to change. Crows living in urban areas in Japan can gather nuts from trees and then place them in the street for passing cars to crack open the shells. Then, after waiting patiently for the light to change, they return to the street to retrieve their nutty snack — an impressive example of animal innovation.

Crows have demonstrated abilities to create tools (like bending a piece of wire to create a hook to snag meat), identify people and animals who might pose threat and understand analogies. One study even compared their reasoning power to that of 7-year-old human children. Crows also communicate in elaborate, population-specific dialects and play games and tricks on one another.

Despite a reputation for gluttony and poor hygiene, pigs are actually highly intelligent animals. Both domestic and wild species can adapt to various ecological conditions. Unlike most other ungulates, which are strictly herbivorous, pigs and their relatives are omnivores with a diet that sometimes includes worms and bugs.

Pigs are quick to learn, which can sometimes be a detriment. "They can learn something on the first try, but then it’s difficult for them to unlearn it,” says Suzanne Held, associate professor in behavioral biology and animal welfare at the University of Bristol, to The New York Times. “They may get scared once and then have trouble getting over it.”

Young piglets can learn to use mirrors to find the path to a hidden food bowl. When researchers placed the food bowl behind a solid barrier, which was only visible in the mirror, seven out of the eight pigs found their food. Not only were they able to solve the concept of reflection within five hours, but pigs could also understand the instructions that humans gave them.

There's a reason certain domestic pigs have become a favorite pet in the U.S. — pigs are as trainable as cats and dogs.

1The rat is a highly intelligent yet much-maligned animal in Western cultures. But Chinese culture recognizes rats for their cunning and resourcefulness, and for good reason. It has successfully colonized every continent on Earth except for Antarctica. And if history is any indication, they'll be there too soon enough.

Widely used in research, the lab rat finds shortcuts, loopholes and escape routes in the laboratory experiments that top scientific minds design. In fact, highly trained rats have saved thousands of lives by detecting tuberculosis (TB) in humans and sniffing out landmines around the world.

Rats trained at a Tanzania-based nonprofit organization APOPO — which stands for "Anti-Persoonsmijnen Ontmijnende Product Ontwikkeling," in Dutch and "Anti-Personnel Landmines Detection Product Development" in English — have detected 18,300 cases of TB and destroyed 108,736 landmines and unexploded ordnances.

It takes a rat 30 minutes to check the area of a tennis court for mines, a task that could take a human four days with a metal detector, APOPO says. And it can check 100 sputum samples for TB in under 20 minutes, while a lab technician might take up to four days using conventional tests. If that wasn't impressive enough, rats can also learn to play hide and seek.

Rats also have advanced visual capabilities. "Since my PhD thesis I’ve been studying how far we can push these animals in terms of task complexity, and the answer is, quite far," Ben Vermaercke, who researches rodents, tells Harvard Business Review.

"People used to think rats were practically blind; now we know that their visual abilities are pretty advanced. We’ve done research showing they can tell the difference between a movie that features a rat and one that doesn’t. David Cox and his colleagues at Harvard have reported that rats can recognize a 3D object even if its size changes or it’s been rotated. These and other findings show that the rat is a valuable animal model for the study of complex visual processes."

Kudos should go to the invertebrate with the strength and skill to screw a lid off a jar! The octopus is one of the smartest creatures in the sea. This animal is still poorly understood, but scientists are constantly discovering new and impressive abilities.

Octopuses play, solve problems, navigate through mazes and have respectable short-term memories. But how is an animal that belongs to the same class as the snail capable of such clever feats? It may be that the combination of strength, agility, curiosity and a lot of brainpower sets the octopus apart from its soft-bodied brethren.

An octopus brain is proportionally as large as some mammals' brains, but it displays a high level of organization, which helps it catch its prey and avoid predators. However, its shape-shifting and camouflage abilities reveal only a fraction of this remarkable creature's brainpower. Although its nervous system includes a central brain, 3/5 of the octopus's nerves are distributed throughout its eight arms, which serve as eight mini brains.

“If I chopped off your arm, it would lie on the floor,” says Jennifer Mather, a scientific advisor for the documentary "My Octopus Teacher," tells Discover Magazine. “If I chop off an octopus’s arm, it acts like sort of an independent entity for a while.”

A video captured an octopus pulling two halves of a coconut shell, which it later uses as shelter. The intelligent animal knows the shells will come in handy at a future date.

Octopuses show the same smarts when brought into science labs. Researchers confirmed that octopuses could recognize individual humans despite them wearing identical uniforms. In fact, the animals behaved differently around the person who fed them and the person who touched them with a bristly stick — something humans would definitely do.

Pigeons are abundant in most major cities of North America, and many people think of them as mere pests. However, this ubiquitous bird is actually quite smart. Because pigeons have been the subjects of countless scientific experiments, there is a wealth of knowledge about their intellectual abilities.

For example, pigeons can recognize hundreds of images even after several years have passed. They can also identify themselves in a mirror, learn to perform a sequence of movements and discriminate between two paintings — pretty impressive for a common bird.

But that's just scratching the surface. There's a reason governments and militaries used pigeons around the world. Before technology progressed, these pigeons carried critical messages back and forth behind enemy lines during both World Wars. And other pigeons, equipped with tiny cameras, flew over enemy territories to gather information.

“Pigeon behavior suggests that nature has created an algorithm that is highly effective in learning very challenging tasks,” said Edward Wasserman, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Iowa, according to The Guardian. “Not necessarily with the greatest speed, but with great consistency.”

So don't let that neighborhood pigeon pecking at the ground fool you — this animal doesn't have a bird brain; it's a brainy bird.

This animal's dogged persistence and impeccable memory have made it the nemesis of gardeners everywhere. Most squirrels display an impressive array of tricks and strategies that help them survive, which researchers believe shows an advanced level of cunning and intellect. For starters, these intelligent creatures are essentially woodland animals that have adapted to living alongside humans, eating out of bird feeders, flower gardens and whatever food might be lying around.

If you're a fan of the "Ice Age" films, you know how important an acorn is for Scrat, the saber tooth squirrel. Well, it's no different in real life. So much so that Eastern gray squirrels dig holes, pretend to hide their food in them and run off to other secret places to stash their food. This is deceptive caching, and they do this to confuse potential thieves.

Tree squirrels, on the other hand, use "spatial chunking" to sort their nut pile by size, type, and perhaps nutritional value and taste. This helps them find what they want when they get hungry. They are also able to store and cache food for leaner times, and then find their hidden morsels many months later.

African grey parrots are one of the smartest bird species due to their exceptional problem-solving abilities, communication skills, and memory. They can learn and mimic human speech with remarkable accuracy. One famous example is Alex the parrot, who could identify colors, shapes and even count up to six objects, demonstrating cognitive abilities similar to those of a young child.

Their impressive memory allows them to remember people and tasks for long periods, further emphasizing their intelligence. In an experiment at Harvard, Griffin, an African grey parrot, outperformed children and college students in a complex visual memory test. Griffin consistently outperformed 6- to 8-year-olds and matched or exceeded Harvard undergraduates in most trials. The test involved tracking objects hidden under cups and assessing visual working memory and cognitive manipulation abilities.

“We had students concentrating in engineering, pre-meds, this, that, seniors, and he just kicked their butts,” says Hrag Pailian, who led the experiment, to The Harvard Gazette. “Think about it: Grey parrot outperforms Harvard undergrads. That’s pretty freaking awesome."

Bonobos use complex vocalizations and gestures to communicate, and studies show they can understand and use symbolic language, such as using lexigrams, to convey meaning. Another study found that bonobos and chimpanzees engage in cooperative turn-taking during communication, similar to human conversations.

The research observed bonobo mother-infant dyads using gestures with eye contact and overlapping responses to initiate joint travel, resembling cooperative language structures. Compared to chimpanzees, bonobos demonstrated more immediate and overlapping responses, suggesting more fluid and rapid interaction.

In addition, bonobos are empathetic and cooperative, often working together to solve tasks and sharing food. Unlike chimps, they do not outgrow sharing. In one experiment, scientists found that despite being able to keep food to themselves, they invited other bonobos to join them to eat.

"What we found is that the bonobos voluntarily chose to open the door for their neighbor so they could share the food," says primatologist Brian Hare, according to the U.S. National Science Foundation. “I really think they are the smartest ape in the world. We have a lot to learn from them."

Maybe including how to build a proper fire.

Dogs can learn commands, recognize human emotions and solve problems. Psychologist and canine expert Stanley Coren found that the average dog can learn over 165 words, making them capable of understanding complex commands. One particularly smart pup, Chaser the border collie, learned more than 1,000 words.

Dogs also exhibit emotional intelligence, responding to human facial expressions and tones of voice. One study explores how dogs recognize human emotional expressions and respond accordingly, highlighting their sensitivity to social cues. Dogs can distinguish between positive and negative facial expressions, showing more engagement with happy faces and avoiding angry ones.

The study concludes, “Dogs problem-solve all the time and being able to read humans’ emotional expressions, emotional states and emotionally driven behaviour is tremendously advantageous and may be seen as a highly important adaptive feature.”

Bees exhibit advanced problem-solving, communication and learning abilities. One famous example is the "waggle dance," where bees communicate the location of food sources to their hive mates using precise movements.

Studies show bees can count up to four and recognize human faces, demonstrating complex visual processing. Additionally, a 2016 study found that bees can learn to pull strings to access food and even teach this skill to other bees.

“Once you train a single individual in the colony, the skill spreads swiftly to all the bees,” Lars Chittka, professor of sensory and behavioral ecology at Queen Mary University of London, tells The Guardian. “Our work and that of other labs has shown that bees are really highly intelligent individuals… We now have suggestive evidence that there is some level of conscious awareness in bees — that there is a sentience, that they have emotion-like states.”

Cats’ problem-solving skills, memory, and adaptability are a few reasons the felines are intelligent. A 2020 study investigated the cognitive abilities of domestic cats, particularly their memory and social behaviors. It found that cats can remember their owner’s voice and recognize their name, suggesting a level of social intelligence. Additionally, the study emphasizes cats' use of social learning and the ability to adapt to complex environments.

Another study suggests that cats might be smarter than dogs: “Cats have much smaller brains (25 g) than dogs (74 g), but a much higher NPD [neuron packing density], and they therefore have almost twice as many cortical neurons (300 million) as dogs (160 million).”

Other researchers believe that cats and dogs are on more even footing, but cats’ independent nature makes them harder to study.

Whales display their intelligence through cooperation and communication. For example, humpback whales use "bubble net feeding," a collaborative hunting technique that shows advanced cooperation and planning. It works like a fishing net to help them capture their prey.

“You realize how much control the animals are exerting over this,” says Andy Szabo, biologist and director of the Alaska Whale Foundation. “It is not a random behavior. It’s a very structured, choreographed behavior. These whales are actually manufacturing these tools. And so we think that really elevates these animals, or it should elevate these animals in our own consciousness, in terms of their cognition.”

Studies on orca whales reveal they have distinct vocal dialects and they can exhibit strong emotional bonds and even empathy, as demonstrated by instances of whales helping other species in distress.

Horses may not always get the credit they deserve, but these intelligent animals can tap into human emotions. One study found that domestic horses can recognize human emotions across different sensory modalities. Researchers showed horses animated images of human facial expressions — like joy and anger — while hearing corresponding vocalizations.

The horses looked longer at the mismatched pairings, and their heart rate and behavior differed based on the emotion. “These results suggest that horses can match visual and vocal cues for the same emotion and can perceive the emotional valence of human non-verbal vocalizations,” according to the study.

Researchers at Nottingham Trent University developed a study to understand how horses learn and discovered they are more cognitively advanced than previously thought. Initially, horses appeared to struggle with a task where they had to touch a card when a light was off for a reward. When researchers introduced a penalty for incorrect actions, they quickly adapted. This suggests horses may use advanced learning strategies, such as model-based learning, previously thought beyond their cognitive capacity.

Wolves are highly cooperative animals, relying on teamwork for survival through hunting, territory defense, and raising offspring. They can also engage in post-conflict strategies like consoling and calming others.

They may also be more cognitively advanced than dogs — at least in some areas. Unlike dogs, wolves can make a connection between cause and effect.

Rio is a very smart sea lion. She can pass IQ tests and apply the concept of equivalence. But she's not the only intelligent sea lion.

In 2016, scientists were able to establish the first map of a sea lion's brain. And it impressed researchers. “It was amazing to see the sea lion brain for the first time because, after spending years studying brains, it was shocking to see something so large and so different from any other brain I had ever worked with,” says first author Eva Sawyer, previously a doctoral student in neuroscience at Vanderbilt University, tells VU.

Researchers discovered that sea lions have specialized brain regions for processing sensory input from their whiskers, similar to the whisker-related brain areas in mice and rats. Each whisker has a corresponding section in the sea lion's brainstem, much like how human brains map individual fingers, highlighting the importance of whiskers for sea lion sensation. Additionally, the study found a developed area in the brain related to touch from their flippers and tails, surprising researchers given the small size of the sea lion’s tail.

Ravens hide their food and return to it later (caching), showing memory and foresight. They can also mimic human speech — though they may not always choose to follow a command.

Research shows that ravens are highly social and intelligent, forming foraging groups structured by dominance hierarchies and social bonds. They remember former group members, deduce third-party relationships and use social knowledge in conflicts and affiliations. These cognitive abilities, like forming alliances and intervening in social interactions, suggest that ravens engage in behaviors resembling politics. Their intelligence is comparable to that of other socially complex species, like primates.

In the wild, capuchin monkeys are resourceful. They use limestone, quartz and other materials as hammers to crack open nuts, showcasing their ability to manipulate objects for specific tasks. Younger capuchins pick up the skills by observing others.

“They ‘pay attention,’” Dorothy Fragaszy of the University of Georgia in Athens tells New Scientist. “There’s all this noise and commotion with the hammering, and both the tools and the anvil retain the scent of the nut and invite experimentation, especially since they have a ‘workshop’ set up for them.”

In one study, pairs of female capuchins alternated receiving different foods, and the results showed consistent reciprocity in food sharing, unrelated to their general social relationships. The monkeys consider the quality of the food during sharing, limiting the transfer of high-quality items.

Baboons have complex social structures and problem-solving abilities. A study revealed that they understand basic numerical concepts. In trials with olive baboons, they picked the larger number of peanuts in a guessing game, succeeding 75 percent of the time when the quantities were easily distinguishable. This ability to estimate and compare numbers mirrors that of children.

"What's surprising is that without any prior training, these animals have the ability to solve numerical problems," Jessica Cantlon, one of the researchers, tells Science Daily.

Another interesting study shows that they can learn to distinguish English words from made-up words.

Raccoons are expert scavengers. And if you’ve ever tried to keep them from rummaging in your trash, you probably understand firsthand how intelligent they are.

In one study, raccoons show they could solve puzzles and unlock complex latches, which can help them navigate urban environments and points to their adaptability and resourcefulness. The study concludes that raccoons’ intelligence plays a key role in their survival, especially in human-dominated landscapes.

Ants are tiny with even smaller brains, but they are masters of collaboration — so much so that they inspired Harvard scientists.

Harvard researchers explored ants’ physical intelligence to create robots. The goal was to develop robot collectives that mimic ants’ ability to adapt to environmental changes and work together efficiently.

Llamas learn quickly, making them easy to train. As Oklahoma State University’s Breed of Livestock page explains, “In just a few repetitions they will pick up and retain many behaviors such as accepting a halter, being led, loading in and out of a vehicle, pulling a cart or carrying a pack.”

Research shows they can also pick up things quickly after observing humans perform the same task. Those that watched either humans or other llamas solve a problem were more successful than those without demonstrations.

Spotted hyenas exhibit complex social behavior and decision-making, guided by a deep understanding of social relationships. They live in large, hierarchical groups and form coalitions, often relying on social intelligence to navigate conflicts and alliances. Hyenas can remember the rank and relationships of many individuals within their clan, which helps them during social decision-making.

Researchers at Duke University found that spotted hyenas outperformed chimpanzees in cooperative problem-solving tasks. The study showed that hyenas worked together to pull ropes that released food, learning quickly through teamwork.

“What this study shows is that spotted hyenas are more adept at these sorts of cooperation and problem-solving studies in the lab than chimps are,” Christine Drea, one of the researchers, tells Duke Today. “There is a natural parallel of working together for food in the laboratory and group hunting in the wild."

Cuttlefish can skillfully camouflage and, according to one study, count. They also show advanced self-control. One study found that they could delay gratification for up to 130 seconds to receive a better food reward, a behavior seen in some large-brained vertebrates. Additionally, those cuttlefish that showed greater self-control performed better in learning tasks, suggesting a link between self-control and cognitive performance.

Gorillas' problem-solving skills, use of tools, and emotional complexity make them intelligent. They can even learn sign language, as was the case with Koko, who mastered over 1,000 signs to communicate with humans.

One study also suggests that modern-day gorillas may exhibit higher cognitive abilities than early human ancestors from three million years ago, indicating that gorillas have developed advanced problem-solving skills and complex behaviors.

Magpies can recognize themselves in mirrors, use tools and exhibit complex behaviors, like planning and strategizing. But a study reveals that magpie intelligence doesn’t come down to genetics but to early social experiences. Young magpies raised in larger social groups exhibited better cognitive performance compared to those raised in smaller groups.

Additional research finds that mean magpies are not as intelligent. "Magpies live in cooperative social groups and this finding suggests being aggressive to your group members is not beneficial," according to lead author Dr. Lizzie Speechley.

This article was updated in conjunction with AI technology, then fact-checked and edited by a HowStuffWorks editor.