previous research has indicated we have grossly underestimated both the scope and the scale of animal intelligence so i suppose it should come as no surprise ( and certainly no surprise to “dog people” ) that brain scans show that dogs are as conscious as human children. original article, “dogs are people, too”. no word on cats but i’m not holding my breath there’s intelligent life to be found in the cat world ( i jest! ).

new research reported in the wall street journal of all places finds that “…we have grossly underestimated both the scope and the scale of animal intelligence” which isn’t all the surprising since we’ve been historically testing and judging them according to a human-centric view of IQ. things are only going to get more interesting as we learn the accents and regional dialects of sperm whales and learn to speak dolphin and translate with them in real time and study the crow’s theory of mind as we understand their human-like ( and perhaps more interestingly not human-like ) intelligence. and maybe someday we’ll be ready to understand what plants are talking about.