Animals' Surprising Intelligence & Empathy

0:00From across Europe, powered by AI, this is Europe News Today. I'm Corey with The Story. Recent studies are flipping the script on how we see animals, showing their way smarter and more caring than we thought. Ants, for example, treat injured nests mates like tiny surgeons, prioritizing leg wounds over antenna damage because they're more likely to get. Infected. In one species, they even bite off damaged legs within six hours to boost survival by nearly 50%. Meanwhile, other critters are flexing serious problem-solving skills. A cow in Austria used a broom handle to scratch her belly and bristles for her back. A wild wolf in Canada yanked the crab trap ashore by its buoy, cracked it open, and ate the bait. And a binobo named Conzi nailed a pretend play test, pointing to an empty cup that was drunk from in a fake juiced demo. These discoveries challenge old ideas about animal brains, hinting that complex thinking and emotions run deep in evolution. Scientists now see social immunity in colonies and early empathy routes,

1:02reshaping how we view intelligence beyond humans. On the empathy front, mice groom and nudge unconscious cage mates to wake them faster, especially familiar ones. Cockatoo's in Australia outsmart bin locks with rocks and levers, passing tricks to the next generation. Train dogs even sniff out Parkinson's from skin swabs with 98% accuracy, years before symptom show. All this points to smarts and cooperation thriving across the animal world, urging us to rethink their lives in our own place in it.