I know my answer, and I e heard interesting answers, but it maybe isn't as simple as it appears.

By and large, I would say yes that based on what we know we are the most (overall) intelligent beings that we know of. No other being on Earth has created technologies that we have or ventured where we have gone, or obtained an understanding of the physical world the way we have. However, to answer what I think you are asking, a swarm of bees (if they could talk like us) might say, "dang that guy doesn't even know how to fly or collect pollen, must be an idiot...I doubt he'll even survive the winter". So, I suppose depending on how you want to look at it the answer to your question could be relative to the species. It could also be that another intelligent species just hasn't had that 2001 Space Odyssey "Aha" moment where they begin to figure things out. Maybe another species really is smarter than us by potential at least, and just doesn't know it yet.

An interesting take.

It is also feasible that a species is smarter than us and does know it though.

Or even every species knows it... just like we know it ;-)

To humans, intelligence is the ability to do human things, so a good way to think of this is to imagine you're a different animal.
For example, to crows, intelligence is the ability to do crow things. What are crow things? Well, crows drop nuts in the street for cars to run over, and they know to wait until the light turns red to retrieve them. What skills does that require? They need to be able to make the connection between a red light and the cars stopping. Even though there's no obvious reason why the cars should be stopping, the crows notice the correlation and extrapolate that the next time the light turns red, the cars will stop. This means they also need a good memory so that they can remember the consistent relationship between the light and the cars.
So, what have we got? Pattern recognition, the ability to infer causation, memory, these are things that humans tend to be more adept at than crows. Yet, these things are the crows' own standard of intelligence. And you can do this with any animal, even those that usually aren't considered in these conversations. What's a tube worm's standard of intelligence? Probably the ability to sit in one spot and eat. Well, I know I'm better at that than any tube worm.
And of course, if an alien race visited Earth and they met our standards better than we could, we would call them more intelligent. What would be really interesting is if that same race considered us more intelligent by their standards. That would make good Sci-Fi. Someone should make that into a book and call it 'Mutual Worship', or something. Anyway, those are my thoughts. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Interesting. My line of reasoning follows much the same course. The question gets interesting when we think about animals that are better at what they do than we are.

There are two important factors in my mind. The case for the animals - humans need tools and technology to survive things other animals do without these aids.

The case for the humans, which i think is the strongest argument, is that a human will never be a pet, unless owned by another human (not counting potential Alien races, then there are too many hypotheticals and variables.)

You are right that there are animals that can do things better than we can, if we only use our bodies. I remember one time when my family was out camping and there were a bunch of mosquitoes at our campsite, I asked something to the effect of: "If we're bothered by mosquitoes but bats aren't, does that make bats better than us?"
Obviously a simplistic question, and I wasn't thinking of the implications when I asked it, but it does seem to raise a point. If someone invented a machine that could kill mosquitoes faster than bats could, and I learned how to use it, would the bats look at me and go, "Hey, he can fulfill our priorities better than we can!" or would they see it as cheating? After all, I'm not actually killing mosquitoes, I'm just making something else do it.
On the other hand, humans aren't the only animals that use tools. Should an anthill count? I mean, it's not made of the ants' bodies, it's made of materials that they found and arranged for their own purpose. How about a tree? If a prey animal climbs one to escape a predator, it basically used it as a tool. The line between tool and environment isn't so clear to me, but my point is, humans might not be uniquely dependant on tools, but rather, dependant on unique tools.
As for the case for humans, I agree that the fact that no other species can make our species subservient to them is a strong sign that we're capable of more, at least in the big picture, than they are.

You're are certainly right that not only humans use tools, but you hit it on the head I think with our dependence on them. This is where that pesky word "instinct" comes up. It isn't entirely clear if animals are purely instinctive, or like us they have a mix of instinct and logic, and use both to exist as safely and comfortably as they can.

Subservience is interesting. We are the only species seemingly able to domesticate other animals, but we also are the only species seemingly interested in doing so. We are not particularly good at co-existing, mostly equally, with other species without making them subservient, other species don't seem to have this issue. Is that purely nature? Maybe, maybe not.

Thank you for your thoughts.

No probs, mcNo dobs.

Ants have domesticated everything from mold to aphids for millions of years, farming them.

Symbiosis can be looked at as a form of domestication as well, two species evolving to compliment each other's needs, with one somewhat more dominant, basically parasitism evolving to another level.

There's a tree in the Amazon that has no defenses against predation, dependent on one species of ant for protection. It's branches are constructed to provide them shelter, and it produces nutritious nodules to eat. They've been doing this long before the ancestors of people came down from the trees, let alone before they got domesticated by the dog.

Subservient? A 5yo with a gun can make the toughest adult subservient, heck, they can do it with whining.
Humans require tools to make other creatures, including fellow humans, subservient. Alone they'd die overnight in the woods if they had no clothes on and no campfire.
If humans were capable of more they wouldn't require tools, period. People can't even drink water from a stream without chancing getting sick. Pound for pound the weakest creature to have ever existed.

We are the most intelligent species that we are aware of. There could very well be more intelligent creatures; however, we lack the ability to detect them.

Thank you for the response, but I think you miss the premise of the question. I'm asking if we are measuring intelligence in a way that is useful outside of what we consider intelligent?

The first question you have to consider is: what is intelligence? I guess the second is : should it be ranked? And of course : can we accurately rank it?

Regards.

Intelligence is of course a matter of the criteria you look at. As far as we know only humans are capable to understand the depths of science, so in that perspective we definitely are the most intelligent as far as we now know.

That does not mean that humans are smarter than other species with everything. It happens many times that humans are outsmarted by animals. Most humans who get lost in the jungle are basically fated to die, unless properly trained to survive there. The jungle is home to animals who know exactly what they are doing. If they didn't they'd be extinct now.

Now a test was done trying to teach a dolphin to play a simple computer game, or at least I've been told so I cannot verify the story. The game in question was just a pong clone adapted a bit so a dolphin would with the body it has be able to play. The dolphin understood the rules after only a very few games, and not only that, after awhile it defeated its human opponent more and more easily and even had great fun doing so.
Now the claim that dolphins are perfectly able to learn to understand human speech is not new. We humans cannot understand theirs, but that's not only an intelligence thing as dolphins use sounds humans can't hear. However some people do believe dolphins have an actual language that actually could compete to human languages. The claim that dolphins may even be smarter on many fronts than we are has been made many times.

Of course, what I say now already applies when comparing one human to another. A surgeon once commented that he was not smart enough to understand the programming code I write, to which I responded that I was not smart (and also not calm) enough to to work out what to do when somebody lies with their body cut open on the table. He couldn't beat that argumentation. Am I smarter than him or vice versa? Both answers are correct and both are incorrect. I am smarter when it comes to coding and he is smarter when it comes to anatomy.

When comparing humans to animals the same rule applies. We do many things animals don't understand, but animals can understand things we can't. Simply because we don't have to.

Yep, you've pretty much captured the essence of "it's perhaps not as simple as it seems".

You've also created a rather vivid image of farm and domestic animals taking a physics test together which is both a blessing and a curse.

I would simply say we have no idea if an animal understands science or not, or if they apply it another way (they definitely apply physics instinctively), I'm not sure therefore that that particular criteria is valid, but it is interesting.

I'm actually constantly dancing around this idea I find this word we apply "instinct" we can't be sure that is the only thing at play, as you illuminate here, our ability to communicate with animals, and vice versa, is limited due to communication barriers.

*I knew I shouldn't have posted this, back to constantly thinking about it* :-D.

Cheers for the response.

I've heard the claim that animals only act on instincts many times. I'm the proud owner of a very sweet cat, and she has shown many signs of intelligence and even love towards me and she's only two years old. When I had to have my gallbladder removed she knew something was wrong with me, and if she fully understood what was wrong I don't know. When I went to the hospital for the surgery she looked at me with an expression like "I'm never gonna see you again, am I?" When I came back home the next day she was beyond herself in happiness that I made it back in one piece and in a relative good condition. She must have known that whatever I was gonna undergo that it wasn't something light.
I could also teach her loads of things, and she knows perfectly well what I do allow and what I don't allow... If she only reacted on instincts she could never have learned those things.

When it comes to science. Maybe she doesn't think in numbers like we humans do, but she knows perfectly well how much speed, power, coordination and velocity she needs to make a high or long jump and she always lands were she wants to. Something I as a human am always amazed about. I could never top her on that one.

Oh, and she knows how to swipe off my tablet when the alarm goes off. Maybe she just copied me, but point is, she did understand the link of me swiping my tablet and the alarm stopping. This proves she does have a certain level of intelligence. How high this level is, that I don't know.

Scientists have by the way been amazed by how a monkey was able to dry coconuts for several days and to use a rock to open them. This proves the monkey thought ahead and not on the short term, and using a rock to break or open things requires abilities that so far where only thought to be present in humans. This monkey proved those things wrong on many accounts.

And animals are also easily judge by what they find important in life. They are not humans so they have different interests than humans....

Indeed, things are never as simple as they seem. :)

Similarly cats are my primary focus, though admittedly anecdotal research subjects only. I'm also fascinated by animal behaviour in general, and humans massive misunderstanding of it (especially in dogs and horses). And watch them when I have nothing better to do.

I think animals are capable of much more than we give them credit for, intellectually, emotionally and perhaps even physically.

It is clear each animal thinks and feels differently in some ways, and we all think and feel the same in some ways.

The necessity of skills and subjects is obviously relative and it seems, at least to me, short sighted to assume we are the smartest. Even our experiments, like the interesting ones you cite above, we're testing the animals on their ability to be human. Not on their species-relative intelligence. Animals have their own tools, sure, and they can use ours in the same or different ways often, it seems fallacious to rank animal intelligence on a human scale to me, hence the head-scratcher of a question that is often quickly dismissed.

You've gone quite deep, I appreciate it.

Indeed. Now monkeys are known to be pretty close to humans when it comes to thinking and some physical traits, but this says nothing about animals who are more unlike humans, like fishes or birds etc.

And yeah, I am a deep thinker, in many subjects actually. And then to think that as a kid I was bullied a lot as they thought I was an idiot, and then my cat loves me just because I show love to her and she doesn't think I'm an idiot. Shows her to be wiser than those people I met in the past. Now wisdom and intelligence are not officially the same thing, although that is also a debatable thing, as in some ways wisdom is different kind of intelligence than the intelligence you need to code a computer.

Now the entire concept that animals may actually have a form of intelligence and are not blindly acting on instincts is pretty new. I remember my biology teacher saying "I didn't know dogs could think", which does put to light how new this concept is. Since we only acknowledge that for such a short time it's only logical we could not truly find out how intelligent animals really are, since studies about this are also pretty new, since before this acknowledgement, these studies were seen as a waste of time. I would really like to know what studies about this will show us when scientists go into the deep of this.

Expert blindness. IS what we are discussing here in a nutshell. A thinking dog is difficult for some, even biologists apparently, to conceptualise because they image a dog thinking like a human.

Going back to the cat, my cat, very sick young kitty, often contemplates many things, especially how to make himself more comfortable with his health issues. You can see the cogs turning so to speak, and he's fairly vocal about his intentions and results. Of course, I cannot precisely log or use this data though so it is useless in the eyes of some.

There is an extra layer, how much do domestic animals take their cues from us? That is an important factor, but even wild animals show clear signs of intelligence. Wolves are good at setting traps, for example. Rodents sacrifice themselves to protect the group maybe pure instinct, maybe a heroic act.

Human psychology is complicated enough, animal psychology may cross over more than we think. Regardless of which way you believe, we all come from the same source after all.

I remember a show called "Rescue 911" hosted by William Shatner, in which reconstructions are shown in which 911 had to come to the rescue. One case was about a police dog who noticed the cop he worked with was being targeted by a criminal with a gun without the cop noticing and it jumped for his master and took the bullet for him. Due to the police and an animal medical team the dog survived, but it was clear the dog was aware of the danger the gun posed.

My cousin's life was saved by a dog. My cousin, a little boy at the time was on the street when a car (of which the driver never knew that the brake has a function) came towards him. The dog suddenly ran over the street, put his head between my cousin's legs so he could throw him of the road. If the dog was hit by the car I don't know. This happened in Latin America, and they were on the point to bring the dog to a shelter as my aunt and uncle were about to move to the Netherlands and moving pets internationally is nasty business on the legal side. However I guess you can understand that my aunt and uncle could no longer leave the dog there knowing he saved their son's life.

Neither a car nor a gun are dangers that nature poses but dangers posed by human technology, yet in both cases a dog was aware a human dear to them was in mortal danger. And although the will to protect might be an instinct, since my cousin was a little boy at the time (he's an adult now) the dog may have seen him in some way as a kind of his own puppy, but the question is if knowing what to do to protect is. Particularly the way the dog saved my cousin was performed in a way that shows a certain level of thinking and I must admit, it would not have come to my mind to do it like that if I had the body of a dog.

I've known a talking parrot. They often say talking parrots have no understanding of what they say. Of course she could not bring a big deep conversation, yet some things she said did make sense in the context in which they were said. Particularly shown when you left her cage causing her to say goodbye.

And I know a story of a cat who mourned day in day out one year long at the grave of her mistress, and old woman who passed away. Not only it shows a cat can mourn for the dead, but also shows the cat knew her mistress was under that tombstone.

Animals never cease to amaze me. And it also shows humans have always been a bit arrogant thinking to be superior.

I always get a bit uneasy when people praise me like that, but thanks, anyway. It's always good to get some recognition. :)

Let's not forget your truly insightful food-for-thought (and you do eat alot, don'tcha, tubbo?) ass-toot contribution to the convo.
Or did you have everyone else here blocked as well while you take a swipe at them, you jealous little wimpy turd suckling maggot?

Depends on the human

Well, not really. I mean, all of us have done countless stupid things.

I’m gonna say no...humans may possess the ability to love and feel, walk and talk, but we are still learning there is no such thing as the “smartest on earth” considering that possible other parallel universes do exist, we could see something 10x smarter, also... if extraterrestrial life is real, they are also smarter, humans assume we are the smartest, and yet we go to court cases over murder when that shouldn’t even be happening, and 90% of the time, when it does happen, justice hardly prevails, ok, but that’s at the hands of other humans...and things we don’t know exist can’t top us, so are the smartest? no. because humans have one ability they must master, which seems to be impossible

to grow, to learn more, to perfect

humans always are trying to become the very best like no one ever was (Pokémon joke, and i’ll admit, im one of those people) some humans just can’t understand how growth works, and some still need time to perfect that, so no, humans are not the most intelligent species, but we are very close to being with a little time, maybe we could truly become the smartest

Random question that doesn’t have much to do with this, but many animals are way to smart to eat. Like how come we would eat a pig but never eat a dog, when pigs are actually way smarter than dogs?

No, no. You have a good point.

It’s the amount of neurons in an animals’s head

No

We invented the word intelligent so we get to define it.