10 Animals That Are Smarter Than You Think

Also the cuttlefish, octopus, and the kea of New Zealand.

Of course, laurenara7. Octopus have been observed to open bottles to get the tasty morsels inside. As well, they are capable of sneaking out of their aquariums at night, climbing into the adjacent crab aquarium, getting a midnight snack, and going back into their tanks (this is an urban legend; I'm not actually sure this happened but I'm not surprised if it did). Also, I'd like to get a Caledonian crow for a pet.

Sadly, humans did not make the list.

Firstly, as obliquely implied in the article, we should forget the vague and silly word "intelligence"
The feature which is remarkably highly developed in the human is imagination.
Imagination being quite clearly definable as the ability to form, store and morph neural representations of the external world. Greatly enhanced in our species by the transfer and external storage of imagination which we call language.

Natural selection has tailored every creature with features that meet the requirements of its ecological niche. They are often unique.

For example, the extraordinarily complex organ that is the trunk of the elephant, along with the extra brain tissue required to for its use. The sensory organ of the star-nosed mole (look it up). The remarkably long neck of the giraffe. The skin color and texture variation capability of the octopus.

All creatures have features specialized for their particular ways of living.
Our main one happens to be enormously increased imagination.

My free download "The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us? from the "Unusual Perspectives" website discusses such things in a wider context.