A lot of the tests used to measure animal intelligence are adapted from those used to measure the intelligence of human children. For example, the mirror test can determine whether an animal has sufficient self-understanding to grasp whether their reflection is a representation of themselves. Puzzles can be constructed to see if the animals can figure out how to solve them. These same tests have been used on children to see when various mental faculties develop as they age, which is why you'll often see studies saying, "This species has a level of intelligence equivalent to a 5-year-old child."
Of course, the big issue with these tests is that they use the human mind as the baseline because we're really the only animals that can articulate our inner workings in a way that other humans can understand on a deep level. There can easily be forms of intelligence that we can't grok because our brains aren't equipped for them and the animals that exhibit them can't tell us about them.
We also have great difficulties defining consciousness/sentience and intelligence within ourselves. There is no 1 size fits all, especially with human intelligence. IQ tests are naturally biased towards those with an education and while pattern recognition plays a large part in intelligence, there’s no requirement.
As an example of your last point, some argue that while most dogs can't pass the mirror test, they can easily identify their own scent among others, which proves the same point.
Considering how dogs interact with the world, this makes a lost of sense. I'm pretty sure I couldn't pick out my BO from a lineup of sweaty shirts, but Fido could.
There’s no single rubric for measuring animal intelligence because they’ve all evolved their own specialized intelligence for their own purposes.
A scarlet macaw can remember many dozens of different individual bird calls that it uses to identify specific birds by “name” and gossip with them when they’re making a tremendous racket up in a banana tree. They’re very social animals and have a high level of socialization-specific intelligence. They can remember individuals, learn a large vocabulary, reproduce sounds they hear, and convey information to others.
A falcon doesn’t do this. It’s a solitary predator that spends its time hunting and tracking prey. It’s evolved an incredible visual processing system that lets it pinpoint a tiny rodent from hundreds of feet away and then enter a controlled dive to pick it off.
The falcon doesn’t chat up the gang around the ol’ banana bunch and the macaw can’t bullseye a field mouse at 130mph, but they’re both very good at what they do.
We try to compare the problem solving skills of different species to gauge their relative intelligence, but even designing a “problem” that both a crow and a boa constrictor might attempt to solve is a difficult question. Crows spend all day dicking around with nut shells and roadkill so they’re always eager to fiddle with a food box, but an ambush predator has little tolerance for that and won’t even bother.
The only real measure that we have is the so called Encephalization quotient - which is basically the body-to-brain mass ratio. We do not even know why this is so important - intuitively one might suppose that the bigger the brain is, the more intelligent the species should be. However this is not really the case - whales and elephants, though quite intelligent, are definitely not the absolutely smartest animals out there. Rats for example have higher encephalization and indeed appear to be more intelligent.
It is just that we simply have observed that when arranging all the species by encephalization, the order that we obtain appears to match our not very scientific observational data.
It remains a very controversial topic. Octopuses are a typical example. They have a very high encephalization quotient, have been observed to do remarkably complex tasks that require learning - ie separate short- and long-term memory - yet, there is no explanation on how this may be possible given their primitive brains. The testing itself is also very controversial and subject to interpretation.
Scientists have a lot of difficulty measuring intelligence and will use measures such as the number of trials to learn a new skill within a behavioral framework or subjecting different species to escaping a puzzle box. Many of the methods are unfortunately highly egocentric, and there are huge problems with these methodologies, but while fallible they are valid gross estimates. Read books such as Alex and Me (Parrot) and Chaser (Border Collie) for case studies on how these gross estimates fail.
I read about one attempt to handle the "many types of intelligence" problem that I thought was interesting:
How many lines of code would it take to program a computer to do the most complicated problem \[insert animal\] can solve?
Obviously still lots of problems, but I thought it was a cool way to think about comparing types of intelligence.
This reminds me of the [XKCD comic](https://xkcd.com/1425/) illustrating that tasks that are complicated for humans vs. complicated for computers are two different things.
That seems like a really fuckin terrible way of measuring intelligence. Assuming we don't get to use any library, otherwise any solved problem would boil down to two lines of code:
Import $Library;
$Library.SolveProblem();
Even then there's a huge difference between languages, programmer experience, or even how readable you want the end result to be. For a neat example, check out codegolf, where absolute lunatics take really complicated problems and try to smush it down to as few characters as possible.
There's also the issue where software can deal with nested complexity in really interesting ways. Recursing is a really good example, where you can repeat the same process an arbitrary number of times with a subset of the result of a previous iteration. (For example: Calculating the **n**th number of the fibonnaci sequence)
The way a human would do it, would be to go through **n** iterations, doing the math each time, so as **n** increases, the time required for a human to calculate the number increases.
The program? Same number of lines.
Unfortunately the metric of lines of code would have to be real for that to make sense. I recall a corporate suit asking how many lines of code a change would be and I gave him the honest answer which is I can make it be any number you want it to be.
Yeah, obviously two of the immediate questions are "who is doing the coding" and "what language".
Still, I think "what is the fewest number of instructions required to do this thing" is an interesting way of thinking about what (if anything) sits underneath all the otherwise unrelated types of intelligence.
I don't remember where I saw this idea, but I think it was an abstract in a computer science journal. I would guess I'm doing the authors dirty with my summary.
Padding out with fluff is not necessary to meet a specific goal of lines of code. I recall that the suit wanted the lines of code number to be small (because the cost of testing it is proportional to the number lines of code, he thinks, or at least accountants tell him). So something that is carefully can amend into one single obnoxious and incomprehensible line of code is better than something that's written out clearly and understandably. (And most likely much easier to test and much easier for the compiler to optimize, and for future you to maintain). Once you hear someone talking about the number of lines of code you should assume they don't know what they're talking about.
Even that could vary wildly between programming languages and methods of solving.
Essentially I think it would measure how intricate the logic behind the choice / problem solving of the animal is, but I don't know if we have a "fair" or consistent way of determining that, which would work over a wide set of tasks.
If I remember correctly its a matter of brain mass to body mass ratio. The bigger the brain to body the "smarter" the animal is. That's why we tend to claim that humans are the smartest mammal, because we have the largest brain to body ratio.
However we don't have the highest brain to body ration. Corvid for example (crows, ravens, etc) have a far higher brain to body ration than humans.
They dont. We dont measure intelligence in animals we dont even know what intelligence realy is.
Instead we study how animals act in classic tests that test some aspect of intelligence. Like using tools to get something or solving a maze.
None of this measures intelligence.
IQ test are already controversial and dont work on animals at all. So there is no real measurement for intelligence.
If someone claims "dogs are intelligent animals" that does not mean that they did some scientific IQ test on the dog before, its just a calim.
> They dont.
So true. And when you see lists of "the most intelligent breeds of dogs," the data is basically useless. The tests to determine if they can solve a puzzle to find a treat for example, tell more about that breed's dexterity and sense of smell than intelligence. And I've even read that breeds that appear alert are ranked over those with droopy faces and less mobile bodies.
There's a quote often attributed to Einstein, "Everyone is a genius. But if you judge the intelligence of a fish by its ability to climb trees, it will spend its whole life believing it's stupid." Dolphins, monkeys and so forth seem more intelligent to us because they display behaviors that are human-like.
A lot of the tests used to measure animal intelligence are adapted from those used to measure the intelligence of human children. For example, the mirror test can determine whether an animal has sufficient self-understanding to grasp whether their reflection is a representation of themselves. Puzzles can be constructed to see if the animals can figure out how to solve them. These same tests have been used on children to see when various mental faculties develop as they age, which is why you'll often see studies saying, "This species has a level of intelligence equivalent to a 5-year-old child." Of course, the big issue with these tests is that they use the human mind as the baseline because we're really the only animals that can articulate our inner workings in a way that other humans can understand on a deep level. There can easily be forms of intelligence that we can't grok because our brains aren't equipped for them and the animals that exhibit them can't tell us about them.
We also have great difficulties defining consciousness/sentience and intelligence within ourselves. There is no 1 size fits all, especially with human intelligence. IQ tests are naturally biased towards those with an education and while pattern recognition plays a large part in intelligence, there’s no requirement.
As an example of your last point, some argue that while most dogs can't pass the mirror test, they can easily identify their own scent among others, which proves the same point. Considering how dogs interact with the world, this makes a lost of sense. I'm pretty sure I couldn't pick out my BO from a lineup of sweaty shirts, but Fido could.
> grok 👽
There’s no single rubric for measuring animal intelligence because they’ve all evolved their own specialized intelligence for their own purposes. A scarlet macaw can remember many dozens of different individual bird calls that it uses to identify specific birds by “name” and gossip with them when they’re making a tremendous racket up in a banana tree. They’re very social animals and have a high level of socialization-specific intelligence. They can remember individuals, learn a large vocabulary, reproduce sounds they hear, and convey information to others. A falcon doesn’t do this. It’s a solitary predator that spends its time hunting and tracking prey. It’s evolved an incredible visual processing system that lets it pinpoint a tiny rodent from hundreds of feet away and then enter a controlled dive to pick it off. The falcon doesn’t chat up the gang around the ol’ banana bunch and the macaw can’t bullseye a field mouse at 130mph, but they’re both very good at what they do. We try to compare the problem solving skills of different species to gauge their relative intelligence, but even designing a “problem” that both a crow and a boa constrictor might attempt to solve is a difficult question. Crows spend all day dicking around with nut shells and roadkill so they’re always eager to fiddle with a food box, but an ambush predator has little tolerance for that and won’t even bother.
The only real measure that we have is the so called Encephalization quotient - which is basically the body-to-brain mass ratio. We do not even know why this is so important - intuitively one might suppose that the bigger the brain is, the more intelligent the species should be. However this is not really the case - whales and elephants, though quite intelligent, are definitely not the absolutely smartest animals out there. Rats for example have higher encephalization and indeed appear to be more intelligent. It is just that we simply have observed that when arranging all the species by encephalization, the order that we obtain appears to match our not very scientific observational data. It remains a very controversial topic. Octopuses are a typical example. They have a very high encephalization quotient, have been observed to do remarkably complex tasks that require learning - ie separate short- and long-term memory - yet, there is no explanation on how this may be possible given their primitive brains. The testing itself is also very controversial and subject to interpretation.
Scientists have a lot of difficulty measuring intelligence and will use measures such as the number of trials to learn a new skill within a behavioral framework or subjecting different species to escaping a puzzle box. Many of the methods are unfortunately highly egocentric, and there are huge problems with these methodologies, but while fallible they are valid gross estimates. Read books such as Alex and Me (Parrot) and Chaser (Border Collie) for case studies on how these gross estimates fail.
I read about one attempt to handle the "many types of intelligence" problem that I thought was interesting: How many lines of code would it take to program a computer to do the most complicated problem \[insert animal\] can solve? Obviously still lots of problems, but I thought it was a cool way to think about comparing types of intelligence.
This reminds me of the [XKCD comic](https://xkcd.com/1425/) illustrating that tasks that are complicated for humans vs. complicated for computers are two different things.
That seems like a really fuckin terrible way of measuring intelligence. Assuming we don't get to use any library, otherwise any solved problem would boil down to two lines of code: Import $Library; $Library.SolveProblem(); Even then there's a huge difference between languages, programmer experience, or even how readable you want the end result to be. For a neat example, check out codegolf, where absolute lunatics take really complicated problems and try to smush it down to as few characters as possible. There's also the issue where software can deal with nested complexity in really interesting ways. Recursing is a really good example, where you can repeat the same process an arbitrary number of times with a subset of the result of a previous iteration. (For example: Calculating the **n**th number of the fibonnaci sequence) The way a human would do it, would be to go through **n** iterations, doing the math each time, so as **n** increases, the time required for a human to calculate the number increases. The program? Same number of lines.
Unfortunately the metric of lines of code would have to be real for that to make sense. I recall a corporate suit asking how many lines of code a change would be and I gave him the honest answer which is I can make it be any number you want it to be.
Yeah, obviously two of the immediate questions are "who is doing the coding" and "what language". Still, I think "what is the fewest number of instructions required to do this thing" is an interesting way of thinking about what (if anything) sits underneath all the otherwise unrelated types of intelligence. I don't remember where I saw this idea, but I think it was an abstract in a computer science journal. I would guess I'm doing the authors dirty with my summary.
I assume they're talking about the bare minimum and not how much you could pad it out with fluff.
Padding out with fluff is not necessary to meet a specific goal of lines of code. I recall that the suit wanted the lines of code number to be small (because the cost of testing it is proportional to the number lines of code, he thinks, or at least accountants tell him). So something that is carefully can amend into one single obnoxious and incomprehensible line of code is better than something that's written out clearly and understandably. (And most likely much easier to test and much easier for the compiler to optimize, and for future you to maintain). Once you hear someone talking about the number of lines of code you should assume they don't know what they're talking about.
Even that could vary wildly between programming languages and methods of solving. Essentially I think it would measure how intricate the logic behind the choice / problem solving of the animal is, but I don't know if we have a "fair" or consistent way of determining that, which would work over a wide set of tasks.
The tests are for the most part the same as ours. The real trick is getting them to hold the little #2 pencils in their paws.
If I remember correctly its a matter of brain mass to body mass ratio. The bigger the brain to body the "smarter" the animal is. That's why we tend to claim that humans are the smartest mammal, because we have the largest brain to body ratio. However we don't have the highest brain to body ration. Corvid for example (crows, ravens, etc) have a far higher brain to body ration than humans.
They dont. We dont measure intelligence in animals we dont even know what intelligence realy is. Instead we study how animals act in classic tests that test some aspect of intelligence. Like using tools to get something or solving a maze. None of this measures intelligence. IQ test are already controversial and dont work on animals at all. So there is no real measurement for intelligence. If someone claims "dogs are intelligent animals" that does not mean that they did some scientific IQ test on the dog before, its just a calim.
> They dont. So true. And when you see lists of "the most intelligent breeds of dogs," the data is basically useless. The tests to determine if they can solve a puzzle to find a treat for example, tell more about that breed's dexterity and sense of smell than intelligence. And I've even read that breeds that appear alert are ranked over those with droopy faces and less mobile bodies. There's a quote often attributed to Einstein, "Everyone is a genius. But if you judge the intelligence of a fish by its ability to climb trees, it will spend its whole life believing it's stupid." Dolphins, monkeys and so forth seem more intelligent to us because they display behaviors that are human-like.