What is Intelligence?

 by Ruthie Gawley

What makes us smart? 

It’s surprisingly difficult to pinpoint. Ask a biologist, a psychologist, or a zookeeper what governs intelligence, and you will get different answers. To search for the answers which underlie our own human intellect, I want to explore the animal attributes we consider ‘intelligent’, asking why we label them as such. By inspecting our perceptions of animal intelligence, we can look further into ourselves. 

Our journey starts in 1960, within the tropical rainforests of Tanzania. Here, a young academic named Jane Goodall is observing a chimpanzee poking a grass stalk into a termite hill. This behaviour might sound unremarkable, but it was the first recorded usage of a tool by any animal. It was a huge discovery that chimps were able to use pieces of their environment to extract delicious termites from the ground. Observations like Goodall’s suggest the chimps have very high cognitive function - the ability to make plans, improvise, and think outside the box. 

Years later, there was another breakthrough in our understanding of chimp intelligence. A research group in Japan found that chimps have truly remarkable eidetic memory - the ability to recall images after being shown them. First, the chimps were taught to order numbers from 1 and 9 (an incredible feat in itself). Then they were shown all 9 numbers flashing up in different sections of a screen, and disappearing within a quarter of a second. These chimps could remember where all of the numbers used to be, tapping their old positions on the blank screen. And, to everyone’s surprise, they could play this memory game better than the adult humans they were pitted against. 

Our fascination with chimp intelligence does tell us we highly value their more obvious attributes; their problem solving and memory. However, the real reason we see chimps as intelligent is that to have these attributes they must demonstrate reasoned, informed thought. We see many animal behaviours as spur of the moment actions. The chimps juxtapose that. They have the foresight to make plans, so they can use tools. They have the hindsight to recall previous moments, to succeed in memory games. This is educated, logical, intelligent thinking. Chimp behaviour is elevated above ‘primal’ or ‘wild’ - we can relate to these creatures.

The next chapter in our story unfolds in the frigid polar waters, where a clicking, whistling menace lurks beneath the waves. The killer whale, or orca, has a trick up its sleeve - communication. An apex predator, it can make a wide variety of noises, ranging from squeak, to click, to whistle. Because their prey are deaf to these noises, orca are more vocal than any other whale. Some killer whale can use over 28 calls, each signalling a different message. 

There is a special reason for orca’s complex vocalisations; they have an extremely elaborate society. All killer whales belong to complex social structures - more intricate than any marine mammal. Sprawling family lines of killer whales are called clans, and cooperate to a certain degree. Within these clans, loosely divided pods form more distinct groups, which are further subdivided into matrilines. The matrilines consist of 5 to 6 closely related orcas, led by an experienced female. Only one orca has ever been discovered abandoned by their matriline. To survive in the punishing polar conditions, members form close bonds, living and hunting together. This level of social interaction is what requires the killer whale’s ‘language’. In fact, orcas of a certain clan all share a similar dialect of vocalisations. So, a single individual can interact and be understood by other whales from their clan, pod, or matriline. 

The social structure of killer whales is undoubtedly human-esque; the complexities and close family ties. Implicit in this parallel is what really draws us to the killer whale. To facilitate their clans, pods and matrilines orcas must have abundant brainpower. Their behavior suggests this, especially their communication; using language to support their social structure. It confirms orca have incredible social intelligence; the ability to socialise, form groups and work as a team. Given we see killer whales as among the smartest creatures, us humans must value these social skills pretty highly too.

The final destination in our voyage is the closest to home; the cities, villages and towns of the world. What about us humans is intelligent? It’s easier to pinpoint the smart behaviours of other animals; perhaps because they are arguably less smart, or because it’s easier to analyse from the outside. But understanding people is important too. 

It would be easier if there was a single way to measure intelligence in humans, because this would tell us what fundamentally underlies our intellect. But when we look at intelligence tests for individuals, they are wide ranging and diverse. There is no standout test which declares itself to be the sole measure of human intellect. For example, the WAIS test, most commonly used to determine IQ, measures no single factor - a mixture of general knowledge, memory, arithmetic and spatial ability. And even the IQ test is criticised for excluding other factors of human intelligence, such as social emotional and kinaesthetic. Clearly, there are many different ‘avenues’ or types of intelligence, which take different forms.

This idea is reinforced by our learnings from animals. We are fascinated by chimps and orca for very different reasons, relating to their very different intelligences. They, too, demonstrate that there is a wide spectrum of different intellects. But, interestingly, these animals seem to have narrower fields of intelligence than humans do. For example, our killer whales benefit hugely from social intelligence allowing them to build societies. They’ve never had any need for logical reasoning, or numerical proficiency. 

So, perhaps the orca and chimpanzees aren’t as smart as us because they have a less diverse range of intelligence. They had to focus on important physical traits as well, and it wasn’t beneficial for them to have more types of brain power. Unlike us humans, who have explored more avenues of intelligence. Even if we might be out-performed in some of them - like losing memory tests against chimps - we have a very broad range. This allows us to cross-reference our intelligences, to achieve greater depths of understanding, to have a more complete grasp of our world, and to display elaborate behaviours. Maybe what matters most isn't the quality of any single form of intelligence, but the quantity and diversity of your various intelligences.

I like to consider the implications of this thought experiment - there might be more types of intelligence, which never evolved in humans, and only other animals have acquired. Better still, derivations of intelligence which will never evolve on Earth but could appear on other planets. It challenges the perception that humans are the living embodiment and definition of intelligence, and gives the concept of intelligence space to develop on its own. Perhaps some animals really do have forms of intellect we can only dream of, and our lack of humility is holding us back from discovering them. By only searching for traits suggesting human intelligence, we might be missing what’s in front of us. A form of intelligence hubris.

Maybe, by considering a broader picture of intelligence, we can see what’s right in front of us.