You know? Now that you mention the wisdom-intelligence difference, I was thinking . . . there have been lots of studies about intelligent animals but no studies about which animal is the wisest. Wisdom is vague and poorly defined . . . I mean, you know it when you see it . . . but when sat down and asked to define it, it's hard. I wonder what the wisest animal in the world is. I think it'd be a social animal, and my vote would go to the elephant. I looked up "wise" and "wisdom" in a few dictionaries and it seemed to basically be using knowledge and life experience to make good judgements and sensible decisions based on deep understanding and insight. As far as i'm concerned, "wisdom" is just "intelligence" applied to life situations rather then short-term, practical, problem solving tasks. Wisdom is harder to pin down then intelligence as far as animal observation goes. I think the simplest way to describe it would be . . . insight/good judgement. That's easier to define. Crows are the first animals I can think of who demonstrate such examples (only because i've been recently looking up crow intelligence on wikipedia). Rather then dive into a situation and make mistakes until they get something right, they will stand back and think though the best ways to accomplish something. Also, if a crow has a history of theivery (and I can't imagine a crow that doesn't . . . those mischievious little guys) they will use their experience as theives to predict what another theif might do and therefore, knowing the tricks of the trade, avoid being stolen from themselves (for example, changing hiding places of food regularly). Now elephants . . . elephant matriarchs, those who lead the heard, ElephantsRELY on the life experience to survive; finding food, finding ancient waterholes during drought, etc. Alpha wolves may also need wisdom. I imagine cats would need a bit of wisdom to be so elusive. Heck . . . there seems to be bits of wisdom scattered throughout all the animal kingdom; wisdom in the everlasting patience that a python waits in one spot waiting for prey (up to 6 months), wisdom in thepersistence of many animals in finding food or building a home despite countless failures, wisdom in co-operation of social animals. Of course it could be argued that in these examples the animals have no choice and that they don't know any better. If one were to try to answer the question of what is truly the wisest animal, i'd start looking at the most intelligent animals; elephants, great apes, cetaceans, parrots, crows & ravens, etc. I'd especially look at animals that look to leaders of their group and depend notably on life experience.

My train of thought sure knows how to take a ride off the beaten track, eh?

Anyway, I just returned the board now to give a few links that I meant to give in my last post but forgot to:

News article about an experiment where chimpanzees beat college students in short-term memory: http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/chimps-outsmart-humans-in-tests/2007/12/04/1196530677057.html

Video of above experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khe9bXT-OHE

Wikipedia article for Alex the Parrot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_%28parrot%29

Wikipedia article for the chimpanzee, Washoe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_%28chimpanzee%29

Sorry, I don't know how to make the links clickable, could someone enlighten me?

Plenty of animals have been recorded doing things bad for their survival

Tyranny: Leaders of social groups have abused and cruelly treated their group members to the point of being overthrown, beaten, demoted to the lowest rank, or outright banished. In one instance, a leader of a troop of macaques abused the young of the troop and abused his mates. The researchers following the troop found the troop leader one day beaten and bloody. It was speculated that the females could not take his abuse anymore and attacked him. The troop leader was reduced to low-man and a new troop leader was selected; the friend of the leader that came before the abusive one. I saw a documentary that showed the leader of a hyena clan who would starve her packmates, keeping most of the food for herself. One day, her pack mates all attacked her and she was mutilated, tail bitten off etc. She was eventually banished from the clan and its safe to assume she died.

Intoxication: Humans are not alone in the act of drug use. Some individual bees will suck sap which contains some alcahol from certain trees and intoxicate themselves. When they return to the hive, they will not be allowed back in. Bees who repeatedly return to the hive intoxicated . . . will have their legs bitten off.

Purposeful self-destruction: In captivity, animals have been known to suffer from a mental condition known as zoochosis in which they may engage in varous self destructive behaviors, ripping their fur out, biting themselves, picking at their flesh until they have open sores, one dolphin in an acquarium was even documented ramming itself into the cement wall in an apparent attempt to commit suicide.

War: Fighting is a way of life (and death) for chimpanzees. Male chimps run in gangs. Within the gang, chimps co-operate but if a chimp from another gang comes into their territory, there will be trouble. Chimps go on border patrol; walking the perimeter of their territory to make sure no chimps are hunting on their land. Trespassers will be killed. Chimp gangs don't just chase rivals away. They kill them. This is war. Sometimes chimps get into full-fledged wars that last for years. Some scientists think a third of all male chimps are killed by other chimps.

There's even a single, unique case of a duo of chimpanzee serial killers:

In August of 1975, Gilka a chimpanzee mother was sitting with her infant when suddenly Passion, another mother appeared and chased her. Gilka ran screaming but Passion who was bigger and stronger caught up, attacked, seized, and killed the baby. She then proceeded to eat the flesh of the infant and share the gruesome remains with her adolescent daughter, Pom and her infant son, Prof. This was the first observed instance of cannibalistic behavior shown by Passion and Pom. About a year after this incident, Gilka gave birth to another infant and this time it was Pom who seized the baby, but Passion and Prof again shared the flesh. There is no explanation why Passion and Pom behaved as they did. Passion was always an asocial female, and had been a very harsh mother to her own first infant, Pom. It was only as Pom grew older that the very close bond developed between mother and daughter, and it was only because the two acted with such perfect co-operation that they were able to overcome some of the other females of their community. During the years of their rampaging, a total of ten infants died or disappeared and every instance point to Passion and Pom. They would never try to attack a female when there were any males around. Instead they would wait for the mother to be alone with her infant and gang up on her. In three years from 1974 to 1976 only a single infant in the Kasakela community had lived for more than one month. Finally, when Passion gave birth again to a third child, and Pom also gave birth, the extraordinary cannibalistic infant killing came to an end.

Animals are more then capable of choosing paths that are bad for their survival . . . they just don't do it that often, natural selection makes sure of that.

There are a few other examples I thought of putting in that post but didn't because it was arguable whether it's bad. There are donkeys and elephants who'll break into human dwellings and consume alcahol then go on drunken rampages. Elephants and dogs have killed their trainers/owners and gone on "rampages", often getting themselves killed. It's questionable whether they count because the drunken animals aren't nessacarily hurting themselves socially, and the rampaging/owner killing animals were often treated with cruelty and were just killing their oppressors and trying to escape.

We humans don't have a monopoly on bad choices, we just control the market.