9 Animals That Are Probably Smarter Than You

Can you match a dolphin's maths skills?

By Stevie Shephard /

Hey, you're pretty smart. You got through school, you probably tied your own shoes this morning - you're doing great champ. As humans, we tend to think that we're the smartest things around. We do things like drive cars, invent computers and make frappuccinos, whereas the animals are still running around outside, all naked and stuff and occasionally getting predated on. However, imagining that we're at the top of the intellectual food chain shows a great deal of ignorance, which is sort of the problem in the first place. Animals have got a lot to deal with out there in the wild, so you can be damn sure they've got to have their wits about them. We're not even just talking about teaching gorillas sign language or horses to count, some of these guys can use complex maths and even design public infrastructure (no, really, read on for that one). So, ready to get outsmarted and upstaged by most of the animal kingdom?