"Where do pigs fall in a scale of animal intelligence? #4."

Something I find particularly interesting is the general agreement by average people (somewhat cross-culturally, actually) about which animals are considered intelligent. I also think its ridiculous and fantastic that we feel the need to rank them. I found bunches of websites with rankings of the top 10 or 15 smartest animals on the planet (not including humans). Though the idea of ranking them is a bit reductive, I kind of like these lists as a starting point for a series of work that looks at animal intelligence. So, based on a number of sources combined by however I feel like it, here are the animals that I think I should do paintings of.

The Most "Intelligent Animals" in no particular order (even though they are in order), based on general feelings, as compiled by me

1. great apes / monkeys
2. dolphins / whales
3. crows / ravens (corvids)
4. rats
5. pigs
6. parrots
7. dogs
8. elephants
9. octopus (octopi?)
10. pigeons

I didn't think of octopuses before I started sifting through these lists. So far as I can tell, octopi make the list on the sole fact that they can open jars, and apparently jar-opening is a sign of cleverness. Could it be that the octopus is considered so smart because it is just an enormous head with arms attached? Just a thought.

Pigeons also came up a lot, though I can't help but wonder if that is just a result of the fact that they have been used for a LOT of studies (they are the rats of the air, they say, so maybe they are the lab-rats of the air too) and therefore there is a lot of data for pigeons and not other animals.

Cows made somebody's list (?) . . . because standing around idly chomping all day long and extreme apathy is a good indicator of a rich mental life? Also, this one jumping spider made another list and I'm not even sure spiders have brains.

Language Studies

Anyway, I'm also interested in how many of these creatures have had language studies done on them (or how many show strong capacities for language) since the relationship between language and how we think about these animals is important to me, as well as the fact that we have, in the past, tried to use linquistic aptitudes as a distinguishing factor between humans and everyone else. (Steven Pinker, who I think looks a lot like Paul Cadmus' favorite nude model and life-partner. Just saying.)

Mirror Experiments

Another running thread are mirror experiments, which are probably done on a lot of animals, but which seem to have the potential to indicate certain kinds of mental modeling that might relate to consciousness or a sense of self (like the chimps with the red dot on their foreheads, for example.) So far, I have heard about studies with promising results for pigeons, chimps, and dolphins, but I'd like to look into those more specifically. There is one with pigs too, but it shows them being able to use a mirror to find food, but not necessarily evidence of self-identification. I think incorporating that would be good for these paintings.

Tool Use

Tool use seems to be another recurring factor in these experiments and another popular way of distinguishing humans from animals. So far, I have read mention of elephants, octopuses, dolphins, and maybe pigs for this.

Anyway, my plan is to start compiling some of this stuff so that I can try and thread them together within the paintings. We shall see.