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Are animals smart? – Deron

It’s a fascinating question that intrigues millions of pet owners, animal lovers, veterinarians and scientists all over the world: Just how smart are animals?

Scientists once believed a brain with billions of neurons was a requirement for intelligence. After all, that’s why you’re able to think – neurons are the nerve cells in the brain that connect and transmit messages to each other.

For the record, the human brain has about 86 billion neurons. For comparison, dogs and cats have less than one billion.

Yet the more that scientists like me study animal emotion and cognition – the ability to learn through experiences and thinking – the more we find that humans are not very special at all. Many nonhuman species can do these things too.

Right now, there’s no agreement on how to decide whether a particular animal species is intelligent. But most scientists who study animal cognition have........

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