Top 5 Most Intelligent Animals | BBC Earth

[Music] dr. crony has come to gig harbor to meet the talented Nellie for herself she wants to understand more about how Nellie perceives the tasks that she performs on stage although Nellie can perform her repertoire of tricks on command it doesn't tell as much about how flexible or creative her thought processes really are Nellie recognizes dozens of different individual objects used in her stage show and that each one has a specific purpose but when asked to put an odd-shaped object in the basketball hoop she clearly questions the logic of that command now this is interesting because now he's having to check this out and she's making a comparison Nellie put the ball in the hoop what now he is doing is telling us something about what she sees this task accomplishing and it's putting a round object into that hoop and so it's a very specific concept she has of what's supposed to be going on here this ability to recognize shapes and textures helps explain her stage finale spelling out the word ham from the alphabet Nellie can recognize the letters are made of wood unlike the rest which are made of plastic but this trick also tells us something about Nellie's intelligence she's consistently picking out these letters in a certain order and that's important because she has to remember that order there's a level of learning and memory that are coming into play here the next task is a game called wind stay lose shift Candice once Nellie to guess which one of these objects she has chosen a green glass and a bell a place side by side picking the glass means treat picking the Bell means no treat the trick is to work out the rule without any clues [Music] on her third attempt if Nellie picks out the green glass it proves she understands the rule she didn't get a reward for picking the bell the first time so she switched and picked the glass that's exactly what we want to see them doing if they get the rule of Wednesday Lu's shift your choice after years of training Nellie the results are a big surprise for Priscilla so we're actually teaching her to be creative to not use cues from the outside she's not being trained to use to do these tricks she has to figure it out on herself it's quite hard I think for an older Pig to do some of these tasks because again we're asking her to shift her thought process a little bit we're asking her to do things not only that she hasn't done before but to think completely differently for how she from how she has been taught to work and so this is probably quite difficult for her so it's impressive she can do this at all for the first time ever the Elvis project allows the Dolphins to use echolocation as a pointing tool to make choices and answer questions a series of shapes are projected onto an underwater screen each shape symbolizes a different type of fish for example a square and a mackerel across is a squid by aiming their echolocation beam at a shape projected on the screen the dolphins can choose what type of fish they want to eat the echolocation beam shows up as dots green is a weak signal white is strong underwater hydrophones record the echolocation sound signals hydrophones 16 you know and the cable just takes the signals from the hydrophone to the computer when the echolocation beam is strong enough for the computer to read the signal the trainer's whistle blows and the Dolphins get their chosen reward only three dolphins in the world have been trained to do this out of them Luna was the quickest to grasp the concept [Music] she manages to hit her chosen target almost instantly every time Luna is a young dolphin and as such a little bit more motivated she she likes to play to investigate things and she's very eager to please the trainers each run of the experiment yields different results it allows Luna to choose what she wants to eat some days with is her favorite on others it's Michael here the symbols for Caitlin and squid and this round and green dots are the trace of the sonar beam and now Luna hid the squid symbol and then she made a little buzz of happiness that she managed to trigger it she can now go back to the trainer and she will be given a squid and when her work juices are over for the day it's time for some well-earned rest and play the Elvis system is still in its infancy Amandine hopes one day it could be used for other projects including allowing dolphins to choose toys play their own music and even reveal their emotions meet Griffin the star of the avian learning experiment an experiment to prove that parrots are capable of more than just parroting Griffin's human partner in the experiment is dr. Irene Pepperberg we started to establish a two-way communication system with a bird that would allow us then to use that system to examine his intelligence through this two-way communication with Griffin dr. Pepperberg is unlocking the secrets of the bird brain and showing just how much a parrot can understand for the past 12 years Griffin and dr. Pepperberg have worked together let's go check in here first okay we go check email first yeah Griffin is a little bit cautious a little bit watchful Griffin is an academic bird who doesn't mince his words he means what he says and he says what he means okay paper that's right for birdie there we go dr. Pepperberg simplified language uses the minimum number of words possible so instead of asking what has this made of she asks good boy Griffin can also understand abstract concepts and even has the ability to use numbers [Music] for his right boy but Griffin has plenty of competition for the title of genius parrot his main rival has flown in from Tennessee to give a special performance at a top Boston nursery school would you like to hear her talk can you tell everybody your name this is Einstein now Einstein cute everybody hi can you be more polite sweetheart it's pretty sweet numb before we start Einstein do you need to clear your throat Irene has come to see Einstein firsthand because she's heard of her impressive vocal abilities now Einstein just took a trip all around the world well in Africa there's a lot of chimpanzees who do chimpanzee how about a pig what about one that needs to go on a diet but today was a very special day for Einstein because it was her birthday what did you do if you got a peanut [Music] even though Einsteins ability to mimic is impressive Irene still thinks that Griffin is top of the class when it comes to comprehension bumblebees have particularly large and heavy bodies and flight for them can be a real effort that's particularly so in spring when the mornings are cold and Queen bumblebees are just emerging from their winter sleep it's only a few degrees about freezing but a queen needs to get started early to look for food the thick furry hairs on her body help to conserve what he chooses to generate at the moment she's only a few degrees warmer than the surrounding vegetation as the thermal camera clearly shows her body is only marginally more pink and the blue leaves and moss around her but she has a special way of warming up for flight she can put her wings out of gear so that without moving them she can rev up the wing muscles inside and that raises the temperature within her thorax by 20 degrees centigrade or even more as the expanding yellow image on the thermal camera indicates body temperature is now over 30 degrees centigrade at last she has a chance of liftoff [Music] she will now be able to visit the spring flowers while it's still too cold for others to do so [Music] the long trumpets of the daffodils retain heat very well and they're still warm even after their hot bodied visitors have left so here's the problem the elephant's need to be able to pull the table closer to gain access to the sunflower seeds and they need the rope to do that but if only one of them pulls the rope the table doesn't move and they both go hungry so can two elephants figure out they need to work together to solve a brand new problem [Music] [Music] they don't get it first time out that's for sure but therefore kilogram brains may just be at work the first thing I think that they learn and there has to be some learning involved in this is a task they've never experienced before the first thing is that they've learned that their partner needs to be there and I think in some ways they've learned not only does their partner need to be there but their partner needs to be doing something [Music] after only three attempts the smartest elephants solve the puzzle but Josh wants to know if they understand the concept behind it so he releases one elephant before the other to see if it'll wait for its partner after eight years of working with elephants Josh had a hunch that was going to happen and now he's got proof what you're seeing is that the elephants are thinking about cooperation and that actually demonstrates how smart and how well adapted these animals are it's incredible to prove that animals are smart enough to cooperate [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: BBC Earth

Views: 330,633

Keywords: bbc documentary, bbc, bbcearth, bbc earth, intelligent animals compilation, pigs intelligent animals, elephants intelligent animals, bees intelligence, dolphins intelligence, parrot intelligent, top 5 most intelligent animals, most intelligent animal in world, wildlife documentary 2019, bbc wildlife documentary 2019, nature documentary 2019 hd, nature documentary 2019 bbc

Id: 3rBapgk8tmA

Length: 14min 57sec (897 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 04 2020