Animal Intelligence

I've had animals around me almost all my life in one form or another. Over the years I've learned they are much more intelligent than most people give them credit for. They understand things. They solve problems and devise solutions that meet their needs. One of my dogs understands people better than most people understand people. While he can't talk or count or make a paper airplane, he does understand very well the people and things that matter to him...and how to get what he wants.

A few years ago, we noticed our pony, Meg, standing and staring at the fence palings in her paddock. She would move to a new location and stare at another fence paling. This went on for several days until one night, around 2am, we got a call from a neighbour saying Meg was in his garden, eating his flowers. She had identified a fence paling with a knot in the centre and kicked it out, allowing her to jump through. When Meg was standing staring at anything, we learned to pay attention as she was thinking very hard about whatever it was....usually with aim of obtaining food or freedom to obtain food.

One of my cats, Lula, has demonstrated she can methodically solve problems. The video below documents how she went about it on one occasion, solving the 'Mystery of the Moving Curtain'.



She has now applied her problem-solving abilities to a new project: toiletries. For several months she was occasionally sleeping in the bathroom and apparently had been quietly observing the behaviour of the people who use it. She appears to have arrived at some sort of conclusion as to how to best perform her ablutions, as this photo shows.

The example shown here is - thankfully - the tail end of a roll. Lula's efforts to attain toilet perfection have on several occasions seen entire rolls of paper unravelled into her litter dish