Quotes About Animal Intelligence

#1. We are taught that the body is an ignorant animal intelligence dwells only in the head. But the body is smart. It does not discern between external stimuli and stimuli from the imagination. It reacts equally viscerally to events from the imagination as it does to real events.

Gloria E. Anzaldua

#2. Perhaps measuring animal intelligence by comparing it to human intelligence isn't the best litmus test.

Ingrid Newkirk

#3. If one of the arguments against eating meat is to do with cruelty and animal intelligence, then lab meat avoids that. There's also the environmental argument for it.

Margaret Atwood

#4. If you look up 'Intelligence' in the new volumes of the Encyclopeadia Britannica, you'll find it classified under the following three heads: Intelligence, Human; Intelligence, Animal; Intelligence, Military. My stepfather's a perfect specimen of Intelligence, Military.

Aldous Huxley

#5. The equation of animal and vegetable life is too complicated a problem for human intelligence to solve, and we can never know how wide a circle of disturbance we produce in the harmonies of nature when we throw the smallest pebble into the ocean of organic life.

George Perkins Marsh

#6. If human beings are immortal, so are animals. If matter has the ability to remember, it also has the ability to think.

Franz Grillparzer

#7. < ... > I've
never believed there is any animal more dangerous than a human being. I never will. It's the intelligence. It's the mind that makes it so.

Maggie Shayne

#8. Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so amazingly know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

#9. But perhaps he had enough animal strength and detached intelligence that he could make another start.

Ernest Hemingway,

#10. A lifelong intimacy with animals has got me out of the common notion that they are automata with a slight infusion of intelligence in their composition. The mind in beast and bird, as in man, is the main thing.

William Henry Hudson

#11. The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.

George Herbert Mead

#12. Long ago the signalling had become no more than a meaningless ritual, now maintained by an animal which had forgotten to learn and a robot which had never known to forget.

Arthur C. Clarke

#13. Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.

Denis Diderot

#14. Every animal has its own intelligence and sensitivities. They're all lovely, worthwhile, and deserving of our respect.

Portia De Rossi

#15. If a rabbit defined intelligence the way man does, then the most intelligent animal would be a rabbit, followed by the animal most willing to obey the commands of a rabbit.

Robert Breault

#16. No, I don't have to tell a soul about this, I promised myself. When you are a kid, you don't know yet that a secret, like an animal, can evolve. Like an animal, a secret can develop a self-preserving intelligence. Shaglike, mute and thick, a knowledge with a fur: your secret.

Karen Russell

#17. He was about as stupid as an animal could be and still live.

Roy Chapman Andrews

#18. If intelligence and capability are not criteria for the possession of rights, why would animals -who have the capacity to feel fear and pain- be excluded from our moral consideration?

Jack Norris

#19. I've always admired sharks because they have a dimension of intelligence that is somewhat unique to that animal, and especially a great white. A great white has this organ called an ampullae of Lorenzini, and it can actually sense electromagnetic disturbances.

Jim Toomey

#20. I was so moved by the intelligence,sense of fun and personalities of the animals I worked with on Babe that by the end of the film I was a vegetarian.

James Cromwell

#21. So in regard to mental qualities, their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses and other domestic animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence, courage, bad and good tempers. etc., are certainly transmitted.

Charles Darwin

#22. He whose intellect overcomes his lust is higher than the angels; he whose lust overcomes his intelligence is less than an animal.

Rumi

#23. If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?

Peter Singer

#24. Feelings are the fine instruments which shape decision-making in an animal cursed and blessed with intelligence, and the freedom which is its corollary. They are signals directing us toward goodness, safety, pleasure, and group survival.

Willard Gaylin

#25. If an animal does something, we call it instinct. If we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence.

Will Cuppy

#26. To the woman with the least intelligence, there must come, at some time or other, the realization that housework is animal work and that there are other occupations in the world a thousand times more refined, more enriching, for which she is also suited and to which she has a right.

Anais Nin

#27. Would the Gardners and the workers at the Yerkes Primate Center be remembered dimly as legendary folk heroes or gods of another species? Would there be myths, like those of Prometheus, Thoth, or Cannes, about divine beings who had given the gift of language to the apes?

Carl Sagan

#28. At some point, human intelligence became collective and cumulative in a way that happened to no other animal.

Matt Ridley

#29. Our sense of community and compassionate intelligence must be extended to all life forms, plants, animals, rocks, rivers, and human beings. This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future.

Terry Tempest Williams

#30. In addition to Ameslan, chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates are being taught a variety of other gestural languages. And it is just this transition from tongue to hand that has permitted humans to regain the ability-lost, according to Josephus, since Eden-to communicate with the animals.

Carl Sagan

#31. Because the brain models our sense of self as just another instance of a thing, it is easy for us to project qualities that we only know of from our own minds into other objects. This allows us to imagine intelligence in a rock, a tree, an animal or even a politician.

Sean Hastings

#32. There is One Infinite Mind, which of necessity includes all that is, whether it be the intelligence in man, the life in the animal, or the invisible Presence which is God.

Ernest Holmes

#33. Human spoken language seems to be
adventitious. The exploitation of organ systems with other functions for communication in humans is also indicative of the comparatively recent evolution of our linguistic abilities.

Carl Sagan

#34. To approach animals in their most natural, native settings. I have to understand the mysteries of their behavior. With careful preparation, I can show the animal in its best light, demonstrating its beauty, strength and intelligence.

Paul Nicklen

#35. The soul of man is divided into three parts, intelligence, reason, and passion. Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals, but reason by man alone.

Pythagoras

#36. The cognitive abilities of chimpanzees force us, I think, to raise searching questions about the boundaries of the community of beings to which special ethical considerations are due.

Carl Sagan

#37. Grandma chuckled. "No, you're not going to start hearing everybody. It depends on the animal's intelligence and inclination. Squirrels, bugs and birds aren't big thinkers.

Angie Fox

#38. Our difficulties in understanding or effectuating
communication with other animals may arise from our reluctance to grasp unfamiliar ways of dealing with the world.

Carl Sagan

#39. Last year I gave several lectures on "Intelligence and Musicality among Animals" ... Today I am going to speak to you about "Intelligence and Musicality among Critics" ... The subject is much the same, with some modifications, of course.

Erik Satie

#40. Intelligence is the ability of a species to live in harmony with its environment.

Paul Watson

#41. Like other mammals, they are capable of strong emotions. They have certainly committed no crimes. I do not claim to have the answer, but I think it is
certainly worthwhile to raise the question: Why, exactly, all over the civilized world, in virtually every major city, are apes in prison?

Carl Sagan

#42. Man is the only animal on earth intelligent enough to invent God and foolish enough to believe in Him.

Manoj Vaz

#43. The cells of all vegetation have a very high order of intelligence. The cells of all animal life likewise have a very high order of intelligence.

Napoleon Hill