Top 10 animals with the most extreme smarts - Part1

We think we're pretty smart,  but are there Einsteins in the natural world?  We're counting down the top 10 animals  with the most extreme smarts  and seeing how they compare to our best brains  in the business .

 Discover that a little knowledge  can be a dangerous thing,  when thinking's taken to the most extreme .

 Earth is a planet of extremes,  extreme places,  and extreme animals,  but some animals are more extreme than others .

 Join us as we count down to find  the most unusual and the most extraordinary  on The Most Extreme .

Dogs are much more than man's best friend .They're number 10 in the countdown,  because dogs are smart enough to be  man's best golf buddy .

Because wolves live  in large social groups, they need to know how many  how many friends and enemies they have in the pack . That's why their brains are capable  of some simple arithmetic. But when we domesticated the wolf,  things changed a little . All breeds of domestic dog have smaller brains  than the wolf, perhaps because life  is so much easier out of the wild .

 And when it comes to thinking,  sometimes size does matter . The brain of a beagle  weights about 70 grams .

 Compare that to the size of the organ  we do our thinking with . The 1300 grams of gray wrinkled jelly we call our brain  is made up of 100,000,000,000 nerve cells  called neurons . And all those neurons firing their electrochemical messages  produce enough tiny bursts of electricity  to power a light bulb .

We're just waking up to the extreme intelligence  of the animal that's  Number nine in the countdown. Honeybees are smart,  even though they've got a brain the size of a pinhead . We think we're clever because we invented  languages to communicate . Well, bees are number nine in the countdown  because they've also invented a way of talking  to each other about food .

 When a scout bee finds a particularly good food source,  it races back to the hive with the news .The trouble is, bees can't speak,  and in the darkness of the hive they can't see either . That's why they've come up with a language of their own,  and the language is dance . Imagine if we had to communicate like the honeybee .

 Hopefully the waggle dance will not be coming  to a nightclub near you . Scientists are seldom seen in nightclubs either,  which has left them lots of time to decode  the incredible dance of the honeybee,  and they've even had time to invent  a way to talk to bees in their own language .

 RoboBee may look a little primitive,  but this mechanical bee dances beautifully,  especially for a bug with no legs . But scientists discovered that the most important part  of RoboBee is the nozzle that delivers  a sample of nectar .

 Bees got very angry very quickly  at any impostor that didn't throw up  during the dance routine .Thanks to the work of scientists and RoboBee,  we're just starting to appreciate  the incredible intelligence of the brainiest bugs  in the countdown.

We may have outsmarted  the first two contenders,  but you'd better get your brain into gear,  because coming up are animals so smart  they've really got something to sing about .

 That's next on The Most Extreme . The next  contender in our countdown of extreme smarts has to be clever to stay one jump ahead  of the big bad wolf . No wonder pigs are number eight in the countdown .

To number seven in our countdown  of extreme smarts is the horse . This horse is about to begin his daily workout,  but the only muscle he's exercising is his brain,  because he's being tested at the Equine Research Foundation  in Aptos, California .

 So how do you find out what goes on  inside a horse's head?  Researchers have developed this system  to discover if he can understand concepts  such as large and small .

 Choose the small symbol, and you get a tasty treat .

 This may look like a game,  but researchers are discovering  that horses are smarter than we thought .

 It seems that horses are thinking creatures  that respond best to humans who acknowledge  their minds and emotions .  they can talk to the animals with sign language . It may not be a great conversation,  but by discovering how horses learn,  researchers are doing a lot to narrow the communication gap .

You have be smart to survive the winter,  and in this forest, animals don't get any smarter than the snow monkey .

 It's number six in the countdown, because just like humans,  snow monkeys are famous for their ability to learn. Imagine if you were stuck in a forest  and there was a blizzard coming . Would you find shelter in a tree or do the intelligent thing  and head to the bottom of the hill for a nice hot bath?  30 years ago, this female snow monkey called Tokeewa  is thought to have seen people bathing  in these hot pools .

 Unlike any monkey before her,  the young Tokeewa decided to join them .

 Now the whole troupe has learned to keep warm  in the pool in a classic case of  monkey see monkey do .

 It's this giant intellectual leap  that pushed the snow monkey  to number six in the countdown .

 After all, it's not easy coming up  with totally original ideas,  even if you're the most famous thinker in the world . in the late 1800s, one couple feared their child  may have been mentally challenged,  because he didn't speak until he was three .

 He did spend a lot of time building with blocks  and spent hours and hours solving puzzles .

 Later in life he'd say, "It's not that I'm so smart . "It's just that I stay with problems longer."  That problem child was none other than Albert Einstein,  who, relatively speaking, had the most brilliant mind  of the 20th century .

 Snow monkeys are number six in the countdown  because, just like Einstein,  they can occasionally come up with amazing conceptual leaps,  even if sometimes youngsters can get  a little too clever for their good .

 But if there's one thing a snow monkey  likes more than a hot bath, it's being groomed . Grooming is not only the social glue  that binds the troupe together,  but it's a practical way of getting rid of parasites  like lice and ticks .

 And some monkeys like grooming so much,  they get a little carried away . Perhaps the expanse of fur on a deer is irresistible  for monkeys that love to groom . But there's one super smart monkey  that's found another use for the ticks it finds on deer . If you'd like to be groomed yourself,  but you don't have any ticks of your own,  you can borrow some . This monkey has learned that by adopting a deer tick,  he can give his friends hours of fun  combing through his fur .

Even though  the snow monkey's s'no fool,  it still only numbers six in our countdown  of extreme smarts .

 For coming up is an animal that goes nuts  when it gets the green light,  and alien intelligences that look out of this world .

In the world, the ones that scare us the most are crows and ravens .For centuries, we've associated them with darkness and death,  but could the real reason for our distrust  be due to their extreme intelligence?  Crows are number five in the countdown because they're smart enough to use  our own technology to crack some tricky problems .

 To see these great minds at work, you just have to travel to a university campus in Japan .This crow likes eating walnuts,  but breaking open the hard shell's a real problem .

 The crows figured out how to use  some four-wheeled nutcrackers .because it's clever enough to drop its dinner  on a crosswalk. Only when it gets the green light  will it safely secure its snack. But crows aren't the only creatures with calculating minds .