An Impertinent Question – What is the dumbest animal on the Preserve?
yukon
3 min read - Cover photo credit Mark Newman.
The guest on my bus tour with the British accent began his comment, ‘this is an impertinent question, so you don’t have to answer it…
‘Oh’? I thought,
‘What is the dumbest animal on the Preserve?’ he continued.
We were at the Thinhorn rams with their big curly horns, and as if on cue, one of the older ones turned to us and gave us the most goggle-eyed dumbest look you could imagine. Everyone laughed and I didn’t have to answer.
Dall's Sheep Ram making a funny face but normal for a sheep sensing the air. Photo credit Mark Newman.
But how about we flip that question and ask instead, ‘What is the smartest animal on the Preserve?’
First, one might ask, what is intelligence? One definition of intelligence is the ability to adapt to new situations and to learn from experience. However, a little bit of research reveals that we can’t really answer which species is more intelligent than another. Animals are well suited to what they need for survival through instinct and physical adaptations, (instinct is behaviour oriented and is defined as; ‘an inborn impulse or motivation to action typically performed in response to specific external stimuli’. Today instinct is generally described as a stereotyped, apparently unlearned, genetically determined behaviour pattern. While we can identify faster learners and slower learners within a species we can’t readily compare the intelligence of different species. Personally, I cannot dam up a creek using mud and sticks and my bare hands but does that mean I am dumber than a beaver. I hope not.
Personally, I cannot dam up a creek using mud and sticks and my bare hands but does that mean I am dumber than a beaver. I hope not.
We have learned that intelligence tests involving people can be culturally biased. Devising tests that try to fairly compare different animal species is even harder. In one test the animal subjects were required to learn a sequence of visual cues to receive a food reward. Monkeys learned quite quickly, rats more slowly. But rats have poor eyesight and when the cues were changed from visual to scented the rats learned as fast as the monkeys.
Even trying to compare dogs to captive wolves is problematic as a dog’s primary problem-solving tool is us. Ball rolls under the couch, get your human. Hungry, get your human. Need to go outside, get your human and so on.
Additionally, most animals have a good amount of persistence, especially when searching for food. Hence the annual warnings from the conservation officers about the danger of having attractants in our yards in regarding bears. If, after weeks of trying, the fox finally manages to break into the hen house, is that persistence or intelligence or a combination of both? A captive wolf in a sanctuary during an experiment to test methods of non-lethal predator control challenged an electrified barrier 800 times! Now that’s persistence.
And if a captive muskox spends hours or even days ramming his boss (the flat bit of thick horn across his forehead) into a welded steel industrial gate separating him from the female muskox until it breaks; that is certainly persistent but is it intelligent? Nevertheless, the gates at the Preserve between the male and female muskox have been reinforced.
It is not difficult to suggest that predators probably have the most advanced ability to learn since their meals tend to run away and hide. They must continually adapt to fluid situations in order to eat. But the most amazing example of non-human learning I have run across is reported by Bernd Heinrich, author of, Ravens in Winter’, where he presented four groups of ravens with a puzzle consisting of pieces of meat hanging from strings. One of the wild ravens, without having watched anyone else’s attempts, after pondering the problem for a period of time, flew straight to a perch above a hanging piece of meat, pulled the string up, put his foot on it to hold the slack and repeated the sequence until he had reeled in the piece of meat. First try. Read the full account here.
So, while they are not part of the Preserve’s collection, there are certainly ravens on the Preserve and they get my vote as smartest.
Pete Neilson
Wildlife Interpreter
'Sir' Pete grew up in suburban Southern Ontario north of Toronto. In the late 80's, he followed the lure of London and Service to the Yukon. 'Sir' Pete has lived off grid in the Yukon all along from a wall tent and later a tepee in his earlier years and now a small cabin near Twin lakes. He guided wilderness canoe trips many years in the 90's and early 2000's and got his first sled dog in ’91; currently he has 15 dogs for recreational mushing. 'Sir' Pete enjoys being at home or out with his dogs as much as he can.
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