Amplified Animal Aptitude: Difference between revisions

 

Beyond that, they will, if they belong to a human, also circumvent their natural instincts in order to aid or protect their humans.

* Wolf in ''[[The Journey of Natty Gann]]'' demonstrates an implausible capacity for reason: not only does he recognize the part Natty played in his escape from a dogfighting ring (by opening a door for him), he repays her by presenting her with a freshly-killed rabbit when she's starving in the woods, and proceeds to follow her around warning her of impending danger and performing acts of altruism like defending a farmer's chicken coop from foxes for no apparent reason beyond repaying the farmer and his wife for helping Natty. At times, Wolf seems like the smartest character in the whole movie.

* Trigger, the 'smartest horse in the west'.

* In ''[[Rio]]'', Blu, while unable to fly, can turn on a computer, ride a skateboard, and open his own cage.

 

 

== Literature ==

** In ''Changes'', {{spoiler|the Leanansidhe briefly turns Harry and his companions into hounds. In this form, Mouse's "speech" can be clearly interpreted as English - and he gets into a quick, vicious argument with Lea over turning the team back to normal.}}

** Mister, Harry's 30 pound pet cat appears to be somewhat more intelligent than most animals. Or that could just be cats. Though something could be made of the fact that he looks exactly the same as always under the Sight.

** Her grandaughter Coucou, from ''Ransom of the Seven Ships'', continues the family tradition of genius. The game-playing monkeys on the island aren't slouches either.

** Isis from ''The White Wolf of Icicle Creek'' is a borderline example, as she can understand and remember a long series of commands, but only after considerable training.

* Koromaru the dog from ''[[Persona 3]]'' can summon a Persona, fight using a knife held in his teeth, and understands human speech perfectly. That should be more than enough to qualify.

* Repede from ''[[Tales of Vesperia]]''. He's a dog who's perfectly capable of understanding human speech, and is an extremely capable fighter, being able to wield a sword held in his teeth, and being able to unleash artes that are just as flashy and deadly as those of the human characters.

* Subverted in ''[[Girl Genius]]'', where Krosp the talking cat is a mad scientist's creation, endowed not just with intelligence and speech but also the ability to command all other cats, creating an unseen army of spies, messengers and saboteurs wherever he goes. Emphasis on "mad": cats obey Krosp, but they're ''animals''. They're not sapient, they can't reason, and if they understand their orders they have an attention span of seconds.

** Well, it's not quite right to say he has the "ability" to command cats. That was his intended purpose, but the only problem that was solved by creating Krosp was the issue of communication. Cats can understand him and vice versa, but he still has to get their attention, get them interested enough to do what he's asking, and care enough to do it for long enough to actually finish the job. Seeing as they're cats, it was this last one especially that caused problems.

* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'': [[Everything's Better with Monkeys|Judy]], Doctor McNinja's gorilla receptionist, can read and write, drive cars, and is in general treated like a human character. [[Everything's Better with Dinosaurs|Yoshi]] the raptor mount is somewhat more animalistic, but is able to communicate with Judy and understand concepts like writing, even if he can't read. Later, when fully sapient dinosaurs take over the world, they {{spoiler|try to make him intelligent, but even then he has rather limited linguistic abilities and is only capable of [[You No Take Candle]]-style speech}}.

 

 

== Real Life ==

* Animal rights groups, even the less extreme ones, contend that many animals are more intelligent than we give them credit for, which is why they are against animal testing, whaling, and a number of other activities that harm animals by man's hand.

** This is a huge generalisation. Many animal rights advocates believe that humans are far superior to animals in intelligence and self-awareness, but that this superiority does not give us carte blanche to imprison and slaughter them.

*** It's important to realize, though, that concepts like IQ can't really apply to animals, since many animals are as smart or smarter than humans in certain ''very specific'' areas, but not others. Alex the parrot, mentioned above, is often misleading referenced as being "as smart as a five-year-old." Some things he could do, like answer questions such as "What's the same?" or "What's different?" are indeed tasks that even gifted human five-year-olds often struggle with. But there are other intellectual tasks any five-year-old could do that Alex couldn't (and, no doubt, probably things every parrot knows that no human does).

* In an episode of the [[Reality Show]] ''It's Me Or The Dog'', super-intelligent dogs were featured, hilariously stealing the peanut butter as their trainer watched through hidden cameras.

*** Being around Adam may have had a side-effect on his group, though. "My goldfish are eating their own poop."

* Every time the matter of animal intelligence comes up, the first example that gets trotted out is parrots who learn enough English to carry on actual conversations. One report on such parrots even demonstrated that one such parrot could, in tests, understand that he was being asked to tell what was different about two shapes he was shown and could even suss out trick questions (asking "What's different?" about two identical shapes got a response of "None").

** Squirrels are the chief rivals of rats for the title of "smartest rodent", as demonstrated by their phenomenal ability to outsmart the protections people use for their birdfeeders.

* Crows in Japan and California have been seen using passing cars to crack walnuts. They even go to traffic crossings and only deposit and retrieve the nuts when it's safe.

* Reptiles. They may have smaller brains than mammals, but they're ''much'' more intelligent than we give them credit for. In the past, many attempts to gauge reptile intelligence came to the conclusion that they were [[The Ditz|incredibly stupid]], but it turned out that this was only because reptiles see and evaluate the world differently from the way we mammals do. You can't train a snake to do something in the same way you can train a cat, because you need to understand how a snake's brain and senses make it perceive the world. More recent studies, reflecting on this idea, have shown that, among other things, corn snakes are able to navigate mazes, monitor lizards engage in play behavior and can distinguish numbers up to six, crocodiles learn faster than lab rats with little conditioning, and leopard geckos have distinct personalities. Smart, indeed.

** In fact, many neurologists have begun to abandon the idea that brain size determines how intelligent an animal is. This should be obvious, because certain species of rodents have brain-to-body size ratios larger than that of humans.

[[Category:Animal Tropes]]

[[Category:Intelligence Tropes]]

[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]