Kanzi, a 39-year-old bonobo, became well-known for his language skills. He can communicate using hundreds of symbols that correlate to words.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection
Vietnamese potbellied pigs are, like all pigs, highly social. Studies show that they use deception to keep other pigs away from their food.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection
Some African cichlid fish, native to Lake Tanganyika in East Africa, are able to distinguish familiar fish from strangers by their facial patterns. Studies show that they spend longer tracking the movements of strangers than of fish they know.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection
The scrub jay, a bird native to western North America, can remember more than 200 different spots where it stashed food, as well as the specific item in each cache.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection
Studies have highlighted the memory skills of border collies. Until his death in July 2019, one named Chaser remembered 1,022 nouns—the largest tested vocabulary of any dog.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection
Researchers have documented a wide array of behaviours in Asian elephants that indicate intelligence, including the ability to use tools and mimic sounds.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection
In the wild, marmosets, a type of monkey found in South America, are highly cooperative. They often call out to keep track of each other’s location, and they share food among group members.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection
Talented tool-makers (they can fashion sticks into digging hooks, for instance) New Caledonian crows, named for an island nation in the South Pacific, can also plan several steps ahead to secure a meal.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection
Individual populations of orangutans in the wild have unique learned behaviours—like using leafy branches as makeshift “umbrellas,” passed down through the generations.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection
Bottlenose dolphins are widely regarded as highly intelligent. Play is an important part of the social lives of dolphins and is believed to be crucial to their cognitive development.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection
A 2009 study showed that sulphur-crested cockatoos, like the one seen here, can synchronise their movements to the beat of music.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection, Photographed at Bird Lovers Only, Duncan, South Carolina
Giant Pacific octopuses have learned to open jars, mimic other octopuses, and solve mazes in lab tests.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection
Studies have shown that sheep are adept at recognising each other and remembering sheep faces over time.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection
African gray parrots are renowned for their ability to mimic human speech. Studies have also shown that they’re capable of abstract reasoning in the search for food.
Photograph by Vincent J Musi, Nat Geo Imge Collection