This is a funny discussion. Perhaps the observer (us) isn't picking up on a simple fact....motivation. You have to "motivate" the animals to do these activities in order to "grade" them by our made up system of who is intelligent and who is not.

There was a study about primates (chimps/bonobos) vs domestic dogs. I'll look it up and link it here later. The dogs actually outperformed the allegedly more intelligent primates in learning where to find food. Apparently the primates just didn't pay all that much attention to the humans and the way to find the food item. The dogs intently watched the humans and picked up on the tricks quickly. Kinda funny considering the primates are supposed to be so smart compared to a dog, eh? Yet the dogs consistently achieved the task much faster than the primates. I think it's flawed logic to try to grade these animals based on things we want them to do and how much they remind us of ourselves or not. Monitors have relatively high metabolisms and catholic (adaptive) diets based on what's around to eat. They have to either be hard-wired or 'intelligent' to find these different food sources by design to some capacity. Personally, i think they're clever animals and they've got me hooked learning them. I'm not going to attempt to rank if I think they're smart or not and such though. What difference does it make what I think?

Did hell freeze over? Why are David and Bob here now.

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Subscribe to this Thread ] [ Show Entire Thread ]