A great thought train. Thank you for sharing. I go the other way when I think about my many years with animals and people: Humans just aren’t as smart as we have cracked them up to be. The processes that animals have developed are the same as the ones humans developed, except that humans develop a model of the world and then put themselves inside that model and avoid reality at all costs, whereas animals live in reality in real time and their memories and adaptations are ‘right here, right now’. There are variations, but in general, when we see an animal do amazing ‘intelligent’ things, we should also remember that humans do amazing, stupid things but animals don’t believe in theirs as a methodology. ;)

One of my favorites is how a cow figured out that she could push the little valve button on a broken water cup to fill the fallen bowl.

Initially, you’d think it was a genius cow. In reality, cows always bang their head on stuff until something falls out. This one happened to bang her horn on the right spot once, and like an itch needing to be scratched, she remembered the exact spot from then on.