The humble cockatoo. Smarter than you think. (CC: David Cook Wildlife Photography)
Plant neurobiologists argue the ways in which plants demonstrate behaviors that look very much like intelligence, memory, learning, and decision-making. Rather than relying on a brain and neurons, plants use a decentralized network, but both plants and animals can respond adaptively to circumstances.
This list of the 10 smartest animals includes anoles and cockatoos, in addition to the usual suspects (such as dolphins and elephants). Random aside: Pigs should also be included on any list of the smartest animals. Though they are often overlooked, pigs are on the same intellectual level as chimpanzees, and often outsmart dogs.
Comparing the relative intelligence of humans versus that of other species is pointless. Here is why.
Did early human intelligence evolve in keeping with one of these weird theories?
The Repository for Germinal Choice—aka the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank—was open from the late 1970s until 1999. It gave women the choice of using, say, William Shockley’s sperm to create genius babies. The enterprise was a strange mixture of eugenics and democratization. A multipart series of articles investigates the results and perspectives of the people involved, from the donors to the parents to the grown-up genius babies.
