IF YOU THINK animals are simple creatures who just eat, sleep and follow instinct, the last couple of years in science have been a reality check.

Recent research has revealed that animals are far more clever, more emotional and more socially sophisticated than we ever gave them credit for.

From ants performing emergency amputations to cows using tools, these discoveries suggest that complex cognition is far more widespread in the natural world than we once believed.

Perhaps the most astonishing findings come from ants. Two major studies show that some ant species don’t just “care” for injured nestmates; they make strategic, life-or-death medical decisions.

In desert ants (Cataglyphis nodus), injured workers receive wound care from other ants in the colony, but this care is far from random. Researchers found that leg injuries receive much more attention than antenna injuries. This is likely because leg wounds are bigger, bleed more and are more likely to become infected.

The ants focus mainly on preventing infection rather than treating it once it has already taken hold. However, if a leg wound is already infected, nestmates often stop caring for the injured ant, and that ant tends to leave the nest. This suggests that ants are not just thinking about the injured individual; they are assessing the risk to the whole colony.

They prioritise injuries that are most likely to be saved and reduce contact with those that could spread disease. Scientists describe this as a form of “social immunity,” where the entire colony functions like a single living organism with a shared immune system (Beydizada et al., 2024).

Ants can 'perform surgery' on each other. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

A second study on carpenter ants (Camponotus maculatus) was even more dramatic. Researchers observed nestmates biting off the injured leg of a worker ant, essentially performing emergency amputations. Timing was crucial. When the leg was removed within six hours of the injury, the ant’s chance of survival increased by almost 48 per cent. But if the amputation happened 12 to 24 hours later, it no longer improved survival, most likely because infection had already spread through the body.

The ants removed injured legs, whether or not there were visible signs of infection, suggesting they treat every serious wound as potentially life-threatening. Taken together, these findings show that even insects can make coordinated, colony-level medical decisions about injury and survival (Frank et al., 2024).

Beyond ants, other animals have also displayed unexpectedly sophisticated behaviour. In Austria, a 13-year-old cow named Veronika was observed using a broom as a tool to scratch herself.

She used the bristled end for tougher areas like her back and the smooth handle for more sensitive areas such as her belly and udder.

This flexible, multi-purpose tool use had previously been documented mainly in primates, and its discovery in cattle challenges long-held assumptions about livestock intelligence (Current Biology, 2024).

In coastal British Columbia, a wild female wolf surprised researchers by figuring out how to get bait from a crab trap. Instead of walking away, she grabbed the floating buoy in her mouth, pulled the rope towards her to lift the trap, dragged it onto the shore, and then forced it open to access the food inside.

Scientists say this behaviour shows advanced problem-solving skills and may even count as a form of tool use, highlighting how flexible and intelligent wolves can be (Darimont et al., 2025).

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A famous bonobo named Kanzi also made scientific history by showing evidence of pretend play. In a carefully designed experiment, researchers pretended to pour invisible juice into two empty cups and then acted as if they drank from one of them. When Kanzi was asked where the juice was, he consistently pointed to the cup that had not been “drunk” from, even though both cups were actually empty.

In a separate test, Kanzi was then given a real cup of juice and an empty cup, and he correctly chose the real juice, proving that he understood the difference between pretending and reality. These findings, published in Science in early 2026, suggest that the ability to imagine and engage in pretend scenarios may have much deeper evolutionary roots than scientists previously believed.

Emotional intelligence

Empathy has also been observed in some surprising species. In 2025, scientists reported that mice would attempt to help unconscious cage mates. A conscious mouse would sniff and groom the unresponsive one, nibble around its mouth, gently pull on its tongue and sometimes roll it onto its side.

Mice that received this attention woke up faster than those left alone. Importantly, mice were much more likely to help individuals they already knew, suggesting this behaviour is social rather than just a reflex (Ben-Ami Bartal et al., 2025).

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In West Africa, wild chimpanzees were filmed deliberately eating naturally fermented fruit containing about 0.6 per cent alcohol. They did not simply eat it on their own; they shared it with one another, which is unusual for chimpanzees.

Researchers believe this may represent an ancient precursor to human social drinking, where mild intoxication helps promote bonding and relaxation within the group (Hockings et al., 2025).

In Sydney, sulphur-crested cockatoos have been locked in what scientists call an “innovation arms race” with humans. After learning how to open household wheelie bins, the birds adapted to new defences such as rocks, clips and locks placed on lids. They pushed weights aside, used the edges of bins for leverage, and continued to find creative ways to access food scraps. This shows rapid learning and the passing of behaviour from one bird to another across generations (Meade et al., 2025).

Other discoveries have further highlighted just how capable animals can be in ways that could even benefit human health. One of the most striking examples comes from trained medical detection dogs, which have been shown to identify Parkinson’s disease from simple skin swabs with up to 98 per cent accuracy.

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In these studies, dogs were able to detect subtle chemical changes in a person’s scent long before obvious symptoms appeared, sometimes years in advance. This suggests that the disease may alter body odour in ways humans cannot perceive but dogs can easily pick up (Sakakibara et al., 2025).

Taken together, these findings suggest that intelligence, cooperation and even medical-like behaviour are far more widespread in the animal kingdom than we once believed.

They challenge the idea that complex thinking is uniquely human and raise important ethical questions about how we treat other species. As science continues to reveal the inner lives of animals, the boundary between human and animal minds becomes increasingly blurred.

Suzi Walsh is an expert dog behaviourist and dog trainer. She has an honours degree in Zoology and a Masters in Applied Animal Welfare and Behaviour from the Royal Dick School of Veterinary. She has worked as a behaviourist on both TV, radio and has also worked training dogs in the film industry. 

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