Even though we humans write the textbooks and may justifiably be suspected of bias, few doubt that we are the smartest creatures on the planet. Many animals have special cognitive abilities that allow them to excel in their particular habitats, but they do not often solve novel problems. Some of course do, and we call them intelligent, but none are as quick-witted as we are.

What favored the evolution of such distinctive brainpower in humans or, more precisely, in our hominid ancestors? One approach to answering this question is to examine the factors that might have shaped other creatures that show high intelligence and to see whether the same forces might have operated in our forebears. Several birds and nonhuman mammals, for instance, are much better problem solvers than others: elephants, dolphins, parrots, crows. But research into our close relatives, the great apes, is surely likely to be illuminating.

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1. 1. ACTORwriter 08:56 AM 8/11/12

   Thursday, as I was working in my office -- my chair is right at a window facing on the SOUTH side of the house [UNDER WHICH OUT ON THE FRONT PORCH IS A BENCH], SHIRLEY the SQUIRRELY suddenly appeared. She had never appeared there before, but I'm pretty sure she had a sudden flash of inspiration.
   
   I often feed SHIRLEY on my back deck which is located ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE HOUSE. So here's the "first ingredient", Shirley, though a wild animal, isn't much afraid of me.
   
   Anyway, she tapped at my screen ... the window being cranked open ... and so I took the usual handful of pecans to the back deck [LOCATED ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE HOUSE], put them down AND [VOILA!] there she was. She will come up to my knee and enjoy a breakfast or supper every once in a while.
   
   Now, this is the third morning (Saturday) I've been "visited" at my office window by my friend Shirley ... each time I've taken food to the deck for her.
   
   She evidently uses "IF-THEN" logic. That is she thinks "If I show up at his window, I'll find food out on the deck." Smart, wouldn't you say?
   
   So, I've been wondering how much work has been done to test wild animals (who, must find ways to survive) in the kinds of (what we have decided is human intelligence)"devices"?
   
   I have grown convinced that birds and other wild creatures have evolutionarily developed the intellectual means and capacity to continue their successful habitation even to the present day (through many eons of survival testing) just as have the human creature. And some of it has to do with how, and to what degree, they use thought and thinking.

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