Posted on 11/25/2018 12:51:40 PM PST by SJackson
We will rank five barnyard residents, starting at the bottom, and work our way to the top.
You just cannot find a dumber barnyard creature than a sheep. Yes, they supply us with wool for clothing, but so does a cotton plant. Yes, some people do enjoy mutton, but steak, veal, ham, bacon, chicken, and turkey make for some really good eating.
My wife and I watched sheep being herded by Border Collie dogs in New Zealand. Those sheep would just cower at the sight of a dog that was one-tenth its size. It is in their genetic makeup to band together for protection against any predators. But if those sheep were smart, they would turn on that dog and chase it over the next hill.
When one sheep moves, the others tend to follow. Recently a lone sheep in Turkey tried to jump across a 15-foot ravine. Over 400 sheep followed, all falling to their deaths.
We had a ram, a male sheep, on our Oak Grove Ridge farm in the hill country of Crawford County, Wisconsin, in the 1940s and 1950s. His sole job was to impregnate 25 ewes each year. Not a bad gig for a male sheep! My brothers and I would tease Sheepbuck by holding out a handful of grain, succulent morsels of ground corn. Sheepbuck would slowly approach and take a few nibbles. Then we would push back on Sheepbuck’s forehead, making him madder than Hades. Off we would run for the safety of the barnyard feeding bunks. You would think Sheepbuck would learn. But no, he didn’t, and that is why sheep are the stupidest animal on the farm. My final example: The first animal to die in George Orwell’s Animal Farm was a sheep, in the Battle of Cowshed.
Chickens have the IQ of a 2-year-old, maybe a 3-year-old, but that would be pushing it. Chicken lovers will brag that chickens, like dogs and cats, have distinct personalities, some being a bit shy and others out-going and gregarious. But who can love an animal that scratches the ground, picks out seeds, ticks, worms, and is prone to carrying lice?
We all find cows irresistible. They have the most beautiful eyes, especially Brown Swiss and Jerseys. Cows have a social pecking order, and Charlotte was the prima donna on the Scheckel farm. Woe be it to any cow that tried to cut in line to get into the barn before Charlotte. Cows form friendships, graze together in herds, and are generally non-complaining servants. Cows are prone to bloating if allowed in a really luscious field of green alfalfa or clover. It’s a shame to see a dead cow, prone with all four legs straight out. We’ll put them right in the middle of our hierarchy of barnyard animal intelligence.
We’re moving up the ranking of the smartest farm animals. In second place is the horse. Horses are hard workers, easy to train, and loyal to a fault. They can remember and respond to dozens of words or commands. Roy Rogers had Trigger, Gene Autry rode Champion, the Lone Ranger owned Silver, and Hopalong Cassidy went after the bad guys astride Topper. Each displayed an impressive array of tricks, stunts, and movements.
Now we come to the very smartest of all farm animals, and that highest honor is reserved for the pig. You heard me, the pig! Piglets are the cuddliest of all barnyard creatures, what with their soft pink noses and delicate ears. Pigs can be housebroken, same as a dog. Ever try to housebreak a calf or lamb? And pigs can be trained to walk on a leash.
Pigs can figure out how to open gates, and have been taught to use a joystick to play video games and move a cursor on a video screen. Pigs have been called mud-wallowers. That’s because they have no sweat glands, and they like to wallow in mud to stay cool. Their skin is prone to sunburn, so mud is their sunblock.
Sadly for the pig, we humans harvest pig’s eye corneas for transplant. A pig’s heart valve is identical to the human heart valve. Pigs have given up, without a squeal, their own heart valve to replace failing human hearts. Pig glands have been used to make insulin. Pig skin has been collected for burn patients. As a point of information, footballs are made of cowhide, not pigskin, and all the pigs out there have just given a big collective sigh of relief!
So there you have it. The smartest farm animals, in order, from top to bottom, goes like this: pig, horse, cow, chicken, and sheep. That’s my line up, and I’m sticking to it.
You can get wool from a cotton plant? Wow! This city boy learns something new everyday. :)
I thought of mentioning dogs. I didn't grow up on a farm, but spent summers and holidays there. When in high single digits I remember a huge, to me at 8 or 9, bull which with his own enclosure who would approach snorting when I walked by. Little farm dog, orange guy, would come roaring to my rescue biting the bull at the heels. Mr Bull would walk off. I would have nominated dogs as the smartest, but someone would argue for cats. But both are farm animals in this context. Crows though, they're smart. Horrible voice.
Yes, I expected the thread would focus on that, but I was wrong. My mom who grew up on a farm in the early 20th century hated the turkeys. With a passion that lasted for decades, else I wouldn’t know about it. Note the five are all animals I think it’s fair to say are relatively human friendly. But also probably about the five most popular.
They need a better proof reader.
In 10,000 years of selective breeding, farm animals have NEVER been selected for their smarts.
I spent a summer tending a flock of turkeys, once.
Every morning, let them out, watch over them all day and then count them before I put them back at night.
One night, came up one short.
Hunted it for hours, and found it, and for reasons only it knew, it decided to ‘nest’ in a nice, warm pool of tar.
OMG, never again.
Stupidest things on earth.
I thought the dumbest animal was A O-C, followed by Maxine Waters, Democrats in general then RINOs...then sheep...
Couldn’t agree more. They are one of the few idiot animals that will stand out in a hail storm and get clobbered. Male turkeys will attack anything that looks remotely like a threat, including their own reflections in windows and car doors.
But they join a few animals that aren’t real bright. Panda are not going to far with their future in brains. With practically no protein or vitamins in the bamboo they eat, it is hardly brain food and it certainly doesn’t provide pandas with enough energy to get up and go. That’s part of the reason they only mate once a year in the wild –they just don’t have the energy to do it more often than that.
Australia is being over run with the Cane Toad. This little stud muffin will hump anything, and I mean, anything. They’re well known for sexually attacking dead animals, even trying for hours to breed a female that has been run over by a car, but they don’t limit themselves to just dead frogs, they’ll even assault dead salamanders, snakes, lizards, mice, anything.
Another is the Kakapo. This flightless parrot has defaulted to an absolutely horrible method of defense. If you scare it, it will either hold completely still, or climb up a tree and then jump out –but since it can’t fly, it merely lands in a pathetic heap on the ground. If you don’t scare it, it very well may come out to say hi and, if it is a male, it may try to have sex with you.
So turkeys may be stupid, but they are up the brain chain from a few anyway.
rwood
Guineas have to rank somewhere in the stupidest category.
There were paths worn to bare dirt where ours would run back and forth trying to figure out how to get across a 4’ wire fence, undeterred by the chickens flapping their wings 3 times and sailing over it right in front of them.
Many days, I would leave in the morning and return in the evening and it would still be running back and forth.
At some point about roost time, it would figure out it could fly across.
The following day, it all started over again as if nothing had ever happened.
For years.
Cute article
My ex-FIL had a pet crow growing up that would follow him to school then be there when school let out and follow him home.
I’ve never paid much attention to them other than watch them chase hawks and learned something new the other day.
I throw out bird feed so my elderly father can watch the critters through the window. The other day there were a dozen dove, five squirrels, three chimpmunks and about a 1/2 dozen other birds partaking of the feast.
A crow landed about 50’ away in the yard and started walking towards the feed. Every single critter scattered to the wind by the time he got there.
I agree with those that say cattle are smarter than horses, they definitely are in my experience. Horses are actually pretty stupid and anyone from an old farm family that used mules will tell you that a mule is much more intelligent than a horse. Goats are pretty sharp too, they’re downright comical sometimes.
It's an old British expression, to call the mass of plant fiber "cotton wool." I still see this expression in the DailyMail. Perhaps there were some English settlers up there where he lived (with his German last name), and the farm people kept the vernacular going.
Crows chase hawks? Come to think of it, when I hear hawks scream, there don’t seem to be any crows and vice versa.
Crows pester the red tail and cooper’s hawks all the time around here. Usually when you hear a crow concentration in the woods it’s because they are harassing a hawk.
Are the crows just competition for the hawk or do they actually attack the hawks to hurt them? Or both. I’ve never seen them in the same skyscape simultaneously but didn’t think of it in those terms.
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