How to Define Animal IQ?

[Pursuivant]

I've been looking closely at how GURPS defines lower levels of IQ, especially for normal animals.

Overall, if you take IQ to be generalized learning speed, problem-solving, and pattern recognition ability, GURPS IQ works pretty well to define animal IQ levels, but there are a few places where otherwise "dumb" animals outperform young human children and even adults.

In particular, certain animals do very well on counting, maze-running, and spatial memory tests. OTOH, sometimes animals are badly handicapped by their inherent traits. For example, Chimpanzees in one study couldn't resist gumdrops, to the point where they - clearly unintentionally - gave plates containing the larger numbers of gumdrops to rivals rather than keeping them for themselves. When the same experiment was repeated with poker chips substituted for gumdrops, but with the same gumdrop reward, the chimps performed just fine.

Likewise, critters such as rats or pigeons quickly figured out the mathematical optimum in experiments based on game theory, whereas most human subjects never recognized the basic mathematical patterns required to optimize success.

How would you define the GURPS IQ level for an animal which has very specialized intelligence which falls short of a full Talent? How would you define "weaknesses" in otherwise well-developed cognitive ability of some sort?

In the past, I've used an advantage called "Cunning" to boost IQ of certain animals, such as Coyotes or Wolverines, when evading traps or ambushes, but it doesn't seem to apply in a number of cases of animal intelligence I'm looking at.

I'm thinking that Perks which give +4 per level to IQ for a particular task (e.g., finding cached food, pattern recognition, abstract reasoning with a single task) are most appropriate.

[mr beer]

I would cover this kind of stuff with a 0 point Feature in game but I think the Perk approach is probably better.

[whswhs]

First off, my working IQ scale is 0, plants and sponges; 1, insects and other arthropods; 2, fish and reptiles; 3, most birds, less intelligent mammals, maybe cephalopods; 4, more intelligent mammals such as many carnivores and possibly elephants; 5, monkeys, possibly elephants, probably cetaceans; 6, apes other than humans.

I would treat most of those special mental capabilities as perks, I think, as you do.

[Bruno]

That's how I do the scale as well. I note you don't place "the rest of the birds" on your list - which ones are your "most" birds? As a general rule, I'd put any bird that can walk or run within a week of hatching firmly in the IQ 3 group, and the ones that can walk within minutes of hatching might hit as low as 2 (3 if they get parental care after hatching for more than a few days) - like reptiles precocious birds come out of the shell basically as miniature adults, with a strong functional set of instincts and ready to forage for themselves. This restricts maximum intellectual development, just as it does in reptiles and fish.

Like mammals, the longer they take to fledge, stumble about, and sexually mature, the smarter they are as mature adults.

Corvids and parrots being famously high performers, I put many of these in the 5 to 6 range, depending on tool use and inter-species communication in the wild. But just because it's a parrot doesn't mean it's super smart - some are definitely in the 3 or 4 range.

I put waterfowl and game birds at IQ 3 - any bird that can be regularly fooled by a cut-out "decoy" despite having perfectly good vision isn't very smart.

But while I might put pigeons at IQ 3, they definitely have some One Task Wonder perks for things like estimating area and volume (Tasks that humans particularly stink at)

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Bruno

But while I might put pigeons at IQ 3, they definitely have some One Task Wonder perks for things like estimating area and volume (Tasks that humans particularly stink at)

This is how I would handle most of these edge cases. One task wonder perks. And I'd probably be more generous to animals than to folks with IQ 10.

[AlexanderHowl]

Another possibility is giving animals the Attribute Substitution perks. Since the average wild animal seems to possess DX 11+, HT 11+, Per 11+, and Will 11+ moving a skill from IQ to DX, HT, Per, or Will will greatly increase the competency of an IQ 3 animal. For example, I could see giving an animal Attribute Substitution (Area Knowledge; IQ to Per) [1] to allow it to know all of the best hiding places in its territory based off its sensory memory.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Bruno

That's how I do the scale as well. I note you don't place "the rest of the birds" on your list - which ones are your "most" birds?

I'm going in significant part by brain mass/body surface area ratio, which puts passerines generally at 5, with monkeys. I don't have such information for parrots, but I would put them there also. My distinctions aren't as fine grained as yours, I think.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I'm going in significant part by brain mass/body surface area ratio, which puts passerines generally at 5, with monkeys. I don't have such information for parrots, but I would put them there also. My distinctions aren't as fine grained as yours, I think.

It's not just brain mass that counts. A fairly recent study
https://phys.org/news/2017-11-dogs-brainier-cats.html
went and counted the actual neurons in the brains of carnivorans. They found that most carnivorans had roughly the same number of neurons, and thus presumably about the same thinking power. It's odd to think that a Kodiak bear has the same neural processing power as a house cat, but that's what the study suggested. There were a few outliers - raccoons and domestic dogs were notably brainier than their evolutionary cousins, for example.

Of course, a measurement of neurons doesn't necessarily mean that a dog is smarter than a cat. It suggests it, but how do you back it up with actual tests of intelligence?

I'll also add that the monitors and crocodilians are notably more intelligent than, say, pythons, fence lizards, or tortoises. Their extra behavioral complexity and problem solving skills could qualify them for an extra +1 IQ compared to their other reptilian brethren. This could be offset somewhat by disadvantages such as Low Empathy (an IQ 3 pet rat may want to cuddle with its owner, understand when she is upset or happy, and have a general emotional awareness. An IQ 3 monitor will just be interested in if its owner has food for it), as well as disadvantages relating to a neural ability to process visual information independent of the actual physical performance of the eye and light sensors (an IQ 3 dove can recognize the things it sees as well as a human, an IQ 3 monitor has trouble differentiating between its owners hand and the rat he is holding). I don't think this qualifies for an overall decrease in perception - the croc or monitor can detect people, predators, and prey just fine.

Luke

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

I'll also add that the monitors and crocodilians are notably more intelligent than, say, pythons, fence lizards, or tortoises. Their extra behavioral complexity and problem solving skills could qualify them for an extra +1 IQ compared to their other reptilian brethren. This could be offset somewhat by disadvantages such as Low Empathy (an IQ 3 pet rat may want to cuddle with its owner, understand when she is upset or happy, and have a general emotional awareness. An IQ 3 monitor will just be interested in if its owner has food for it), as well as disadvantages relating to a neural ability to process visual information independent of the actual physical performance of the eye and light sensors (an IQ 3 dove can recognize the things it sees as well as a human, an IQ 3 monitor has trouble differentiating between its owners hand and the rat he is holding). I don't think this qualifies for an overall decrease in perception - the croc or monitor can detect people, predators, and prey just fine.

Humans and other primates, and birds of prey (and presumably some other birds), and cephalopods have extraordinary vision, with about 10x the resolution of average mammal vision. In effect, our vision is inherently Discriminatory in the GURPS sense. But since GURPS takes human visual acuity as the baseline, I came up with a new variant of Bad Sight to represent "mammal vision." A monitor is probably no more visually perceptive than an average mammal, and could plausibly be represented as having Bad Sight also.

The tricky part in this was insects. Compound eyes are vastly worse than camera eyes at resolution. From the tables in Animal Eyes, it looks as if a dragonfly, the "bird of prey" of the Hexapoda, has substantially worse vision than an average mammal, and most insects are worse than that. I don't really know how to represent that in GURPS terms. Compound eyes seem almost to need to be defined as blindness with a compensatory Detect.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Humans and other primates, and birds of prey (and presumably some other birds), and cephalopods have extraordinary vision, with about 10x the resolution of average mammal vision. In effect, our vision is inherently Discriminatory in the GURPS sense. But since GURPS takes human visual acuity as the baseline, I came up with a new variant of Bad Sight to represent "mammal vision." A monitor is probably no more visually perceptive than an average mammal, and could plausibly be represented as having Bad Sight also.

That's the route I went with in my Animalia web pages. Monitors and mammals have Bad sight (Motion Sensitive), which imposes penalties to identify objects by sight and to detect non-moving objects by sight. It is just that for the reptiles the penalty is because of neural processing power, while for mammals it is because of the physical machinery of the eye.

Reptiles also have non-discriminatory hearing, but that's because their ears only work over a much more limited frequency range than those of mammals.

luke