"How Smart are Animals?" Quiz

1. Why did Andrea Anderson need help from Villa, the Newfoundland dog, in “How Smart Are Animals?”

• a. She got lost on her way home.

• b. She twisted her ankle and could not walk.

• c. She was blown into a snowdrift during a blizzard.

• d. She wanted to study dogs to determine how intelligent they are.

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2. According to “How Smart Are Animals?” what was a common attitude toward animal intelligence up to the 1960s?

• a. Some species were thought to be smarter than others.

• b. Animals were thought to act on instinct, without any ability to think.

• c. Scientists thought that understanding animal intelligence would be an impossible task.

• d. The mental abilities of animals were thought to be similar to those of human beings.

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3. What is the “Clever Hans phenomenon” described in “How Smart Are Animals?”

• a. a situation that demonstrates why scientists cannot be fooled

• b. a study that demonstrates the intelligence of animals through a series of tests

• c. an incident in which an animal uses its problem-solving skills to help a human

• d. an experiment in which an animal seems intelligent but is merely responding to cues

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4. In “How Smart Are Animals?” C. G. Beer’s experiment on the “long calls” of laughing gulls proves which of the following ideas?

• a. Scientists can easily interpret animal communication.

• b. Birds communicate in a way that is similar to human speech.

• c. Laughing gulls make signals that are the same for each bird on all occasions.

• d. There are differences in the calls of birds that are hard for a human to notice.

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5. When a reader interprets a story, what is she doing?

• a. determining its meaning

• b. listing its main events in order

• c. reading it slowly and carefully

• d. creating a new story based on the same topic

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6. If you evaluate a situation properly, which of the following statements is true?

• a. You have many questions about it.

• b. You have gone with your first instinct.

• c. You have considered and judged it thoroughly.

• d. You have set up an experiment and collected data.

7. Which of the following is the best description of a phenomenon?

• a. a scientific study

• b. a rare and interesting event

• c. a new way of understanding something

• d. an animal exhibiting intelligent behavior

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8. Read the following quotation from "How Smart Are Animals?"

It is easy to confuse trainability with thinking. But just because an

animal can learn to perform a trick doesn't mean that it knows what it is doing.

Based on this quotation, choose the example that the author would agree shows intelligence most clearly.

• a. An animal learns to find its way through a maze.

• b. An animal learns a faster way through a maze it has already

  mastered.

• c. An animal finds its way through a maze that is more complicated

  than the mazes it has already learned.

• d. An animal decides that it wants to work on matching shapes as well as on solving mazes.

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9. Part A According to “How Smart Are Animals?” what is one important reason that it is difficult to compare the intelligence of one animal species to another?

• a. Most animal species do not use tools.

• b. Some animal species may be lazier than others.

• c. Different animal species may not speak the same language.

• d. Different animal species may not be physically equipped to take

  the same tests.

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9. Part B Which quotation from “How Smart Are Animals?” most clearly

supports the answer to Part A?

• a. More advanced signs of intelligence are tool manufacture and

  use, symbolic communication, and ability to form mental

  concepts.

• b. When an animal can’t perform well, we don’t know if it really

  cannot solve the problems put to it or if it just doesn’t want to.

• c. Animals are just too varied in their physical makeup and in their

  life styles.

• d. Variations of “intelligence” from one individual to the next can

  significantly affect the results.

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