COMPARING AND CONTRASTING ESSAY

Animals' Intelligence

Scientists estimate that there are in the world  7.77 million species of animals, fauna which is certainly amazing. Not only we can find animals that surprise us by their physical characteristics or by the wide variety of species that exist, but also because of their intelligence. Every day we're asking ourselves questions about these, but have you ever wondered what's the smartest animal? I do. In this essay, I'm going to give my opinion about which animal is the smartest.

The study of animal intelligence has a long history. Since Darwin published The Origin of Species, scientists have tried to understand how animal thinking works and their similarities or differences with humans. Animals have the ability to memorize, to develop their tools, to practice cooperation and empathy, and, above all, they are smarter than humans because they do not destroy their environment.  (La vanguardia, 28/05/2018) 

To adapt to your ecological niche, or also as a skill to learn.

However, the most notable feature of intelligence is, first and foremost, the ability to process information. From this perspective, we see that the new "collective of human minds" stores and transmits information not only through the brain or genome, but also through the brain or genome, but also the freedom to store and use extra somatic information.  (Campos, J.J..., 2004)

Scientists have listed certain animals as the smartest as Elephants and Dolphins among others, but I just want to focus on these two. In my opinion, the elephant is smarter than the dolphin, since elephants possess numerical abilities similar to those of humans. This is the conclusion reached by a group of experts from the Japanese university The Graduate University for Advanced Studies. The study, published in the Journal of Ethology, ensures that the elephant is the animal that comes closest to the numerical abilities of humans.

For example, in the case of Authai, an adult elephant from the Ueno Zoo in Japan uses its trunk on a computer-controlled touchscreen. He was presented with two figures with different numbers of articles in each of them. Specifically, up to 10 objects among which were images of watermelon bananas and apples. The fruits had different sizes. "Our findings confirm that their yield has not been affected by distance, the magnitude or relationships between the numerical sets presented to her," says Irie, the researcher.

Although the dolphin is not left behind, the brain of the dolphin has a "wiring" completely different from that of primates, especially in the neocortex, which is the key site of higher mental functions such as reasoning and conscious thought. These mammals can recognize themselves in the mirror and have a sense of social identity. They don't just know who they are, but they have a sense of what their groups are and where they come from. They interact and understand the health status and feelings of other dolphins so quickly that they seem to be in tune with each other, said Marino, one of the researchers.

My conclusion is that elephants are smarter than dolphins because they have more abilities because their brains are more like human ones.

By Laura Rodríguez, Step 8 Yellow