What's the most intelligent thing you've witnessed an animal do?

My mom owns a mini poodle. She's the best dog in the world.

Her favorite game to play is hide and seek. I hide a treat, and I've trained her to look for it by saying "find it". I also call anything that she chews on "bones" (bone, pig ear, cow ear, etc).

One day, I was playing with her, but had to do work and so to keep her busy I went looking for the pig ear that I knew she hid in my room. Couldn't find it. So I looked at her and I said, "find it girl, find the bone, find your bone girl." She was able to piece the two conditioned phrases "find it" and "bone" together and went straight to her hiding spot and found the pig ear.

Her intelligence is always a pleasant surprise to me, but I had no idea that dogs had the capacity to "understand" (not the best word for this, I know) human syntax.

/r/AskReddit Thread