World’s Most Intelligent Animal – World’s Most Intelligent Bird - Highest Avian IQ Ever Recorded - Part 1

The world’s most intelligent animal is man. But man, and woman, does not want to be referred to as an animal. Man’s brain is part of the soul and the soul is the actuating cause of man’s life that belongs to God. Man will comfortably tell you that trying to compares his intelligence with that of other animals is like trying to compare day and night. That being the case, we can not compare man’s intelligence with that of other animals and neither can we refer to man as an animal. It’s natural that man would like his closest cousins, the chimpanzees, to be the most intelligent animals (after him). And it is true.

It’s true that chimpanzees are very intelligent and will make tools and use them to acquire foods. A chimpanzee will learn how to use symbols and will even attempt to use human languages. Chimpanzees are capable of counting and remembering numbers. But with all that capabilities, chimpanzees have never been able to ask man even the simplest question.

Intelligence is being able to recognize your reflection as an image of yourself in a mirror. Man, and especially woman, is very good in this. But man is not alone in this as Chimpanzees, Bonobos, African Grey Parrots, Orangutans, Dolphins, Crows, Magpies, Pigeons and Elephants are man’s biggest challengers in the mirror test.

Intelligence is when you can visualize in advance that if you throw a ball when you are in point 1, the ball will move to point 2, at point 2 the ball will bounce to point 3. Upon bouncing to hit point 3, point 3 will shake and release fruits that will fall down for you to pick and eat. That’s what intelligence is, and man will do that again and again. Can the world’s most intelligence animal, the chimpanzee, be able to do that? They may, but have never managed to ask man even the simplest question.

When in 1898 Her Majesty the Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland sat in London and visualized that the inhabitants of her new found territory needed food for soul, she dispatched Rev. Harry Leakey and his wife Mary Leakey to Kenya fully armed with tools of the trade - a bible and a cross. The mission was to convince the inhabitants of that newly found territory that their souls are part of their brains and that the souls belonged to God. Rev. Harry Leakey and his wife Mary Leakey did not waste time and by 1900 were in Nairobi, and up and behold, 85% of the inhabitants of that territory became Christians.

Whilst in Kenya, Rev. Harry Leakey and his wife Mary Leakey continued to love each other and as a result God rewarded them with a son whom they called Louis Leakey. Louis Leakey was introduced to the trade of the day, a bible, a cross, the story of Adam and Eve, and the story of Jesus Christ. Louis Leakey, like other humans had brains that had intelligence.  It is from that intelligence that Louis visualized that somewhere between God, Adam and Eve, and Jesus, there was a missing link. Louis set himself up to find the missing link, and that missing link was the origin of man and man’s evolutionary development.

In the Meantime, Charles Darwin was in US spitting fire as he theorized and hypothesized that man must have arisen in Africa. These pills from Charles Darwin were bitter to swallow but nevertheless Louis swallowed them. Immediately Louis swallowed the Charles Darwin’s pills, the soul in his brain started telling him that the bible he was holding in the right hand and the Darwin’s theories he was holding in the left hand were not compatible. Louis was in a crossroad. He opted to kill the two birds with one stone.

Louis had seen a beautiful girl called Mary, just like his mother. He winked to her and she winked back, and they became man and wife. The two loved each other very much and were soon rewarded by God with baby boy whom they called Richard Leakey. The Swahili people of Kenya have a saying that says, ‘a snake’s hatchlings and juveniles are just snakes’. This is what became of Louis’ son, Richard Leakey. Richard Leakey went on to become one of the finest paleontologist and conservationist the world has ever produced.

Richard Leakey must have learnt early from his father that holding the bible with one hand and theories of creation with the other would put him in endless controversies. Richard Leakey is today a wealthy Kenyan who is a certified atheist. This is despite him having fallen from his horse and broken his skull and leg, a terminal kidney disease and a kidney transplant to full health, a loss of both legs when his propeller-driven plane crashed and still survived, walking healthy just like you and me on his artificial limbs.

In his determination to find the evolution of man, Louis Leakey traveled south of Nairobi to Olduvai Gorge (read Oldupai Gorge) - a steep-sided ravine in the Eastern Africa Great Rift Valley in the eastern Serengeti Plains (Tanzania) and 150 kilometres south of Maasai Mara. By 1931, Louis Leakey and his wife Mary Leakey had started excavating Oldupai Gorge where they found stone tools used by the primitive hominid (ape-man) of Homo habilis that lived 2.5 million years ago. And because these ape-man’s tools were found in Oldupai Gorge, they decided to call them Oldowan tools. These Oldowan tools, according to Richard Leakey, were the earliest tools man used as he evolved. The Oldowan tool industry is what has evolved with man from 2.6 millions years ago as man’s evolution spread out of Africa to the rest of the world for you and me to have the industries we have today.

Latter on, Louis Leakey’s son, Richard Leakey, together with Kamoya Kimeu, moved further north of Kenya to discover the unbelievable and near complete 1.5 million years old skeleton of hominid Turkana Boy who died 1.5 million years ago in the early Pleistocene.

The world’s most intelligent animals are the chimpanzees. Chimpanzees can make tools and use them to acquire foods just as man did 2.6 million years ago. The ability to use tools and the ability to make tools are two major characteristic that are used to quantify how intelligent an animal is. If an animal can make completely new tools from what it has been used to and go ahead and make use of that tool, then, that is sufficient to make man feel challenged by that animal. Chimpanzees can do it but they are not the only one; birds too can make and use tools, thus making the chimps’ title of world’s most intelligence animal doubtful.

In Maasai Mara, a vulture will pick a bone of a dead animal, fly with it for five thousand feet above the ground before dropping it on a rock so that it can split open to reveal the bone marrow for it to eat.

A few kilometres away there is a hawk (read eagle) that has an appetite for lethal snakes. She sees a lethal snake and visualizes a strategic plan on how to feed on that snake. She flies downward at lightening speed and pick up the serpent from the rear and fly upward with the snake to about five thousand feet above the ground before dropping the snake - to fall free by gravity - to hit the wide hard rock below – away from vegetation – avoiding any possibility of the snake hiding in the vegetation – to hit the rock and die - to hit the rock and lose the ability to be lethal - to hit the rock and break into pieces so that she can feed on the snake. As soon as the snake hit the rock, the hawk is there to pick it just in case the snake may not die and attempt to escape.  A hawk is equally gifted with a visual acuity which is several times that of apes.

From what we have above, the hawk is using the rock as a tool to kill the snake. But the rock in this case may not qualify as a tool since the rock is not coming in contact with any part of hawk’s body. The hawks have been using the rocks to break bones and to kill snakes for very many years and therefore this may not be considered a new strategy. Despite all these, the hawk is no doubt a very intelligent bird.

A scientist (zoologist) who studies birds is called an ornithologist. A Canadian ornithologist called Louis Lefebvre has a method for measuring avian IQ which is based on a bird’s innovation in feeding habits. By using his scale, Louis Lefebvre found out that the parrot, crow and falcon families are the most intelligent birds, and then what follows are the hawks, woodpeckers and herons hawks.

And yes, the world’s most intelligent bird is to be found among the psittacines and corvines who happen to have a brain-to-body size ratio that is comparable to that of higher primates like chimpanzees.

And the title of the world’s most intelligent bird goes to the African Grey Parrot. They are followed by crows, ravens, jays and magpies.

This article on World’s Most Intelligent Bird - Highest Avian IQ Ever Recorded is continued here World’s Most Intelligent Animal - World’s Most Intelligent Bird - Highest Avian IQ Ever Recorded – Part 2