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?