The world might seem unusually stupid lately. If you’ve watched the news, you might suspect some people are devolving. Have they lost all empathy, banishing their better angels? Are they even able to perceive and feel what they’re doing to other human beings? Well, it seems like an open question in 2025, at least in the United States. While we take two giant steps back for mankind, scientists are discovering that the other animals we share this fragile planet with are indeed sentient and have remarkable intelligence and even language.

In this case, we aren’t talking about larger animals like whales, now known to communicate in a way similar to human language. Rather, here are three recent cases in which scientists found that birds, fish, and even wasps deserve more credit and human awareness of their remarkable abilities.

Guppy Intelligence

We all know people who go fishing or have aquariums. If you’re among them, you know fish can exhibit surprisingly complex behavior. However, in general, people tend to underestimate fish.

To learn more, researchers from the Netherlands have developed an innovative method that enables them to test a fish’s cognition in the wild.

It’s a feeding board that has a series of round, colored disks on it. If the fish pushes the correct disk aside, they can receive the reward of food inside a hole beneath. In some cases, the disks are different colors, and in others, they have simple shapes painted on them. Since the board is deployed in the fish’s natural habitat, their behavior isn’t biased by the laboratory environment.

In the study, ordinary Guppies living in Trinidad and nine-spined Sticklebacks from the Netherlands learned where the disks with food were located. A few smarter fish could reliably push the disk to reveal the food. Like people, they had social strategies and varied in personality and talents. Among the wild fish were leaders dubbed “producers.” Other fish were more inclined to observe and opportunistically make off with the food, the “scroungers.”

People Help Wild Fish in the Netherlands

In an unrelated story, millions of people worldwide are going out of their way to help wild fish in the city of Utrecht, Netherlands. Sitting at home, they voluntarily watch a live stream of the water inside a river lock. Once they spot a fish, they can ring a “fish doorbell,” alerting organizers to open the lock’s gate. That way, the fish can swim through safely to their springtime spawning grounds.

Video by ABC News (Australia):

Wasps Make Incredibly Skilled Mothers

Flying over a heathland in Surrey, UK, a mother digger wasp tends to as many as nine nests under the bare sand. Even though hundreds of other mother wasps are tending to identical nests nearby, she somehow remembers exactly where her nests are. Scientists found that the wasps can follow an intricate feeding schedule for their babies, knowing what age they are, how recently they each had a meal, and even how long the meal would last, depending on the size of the meal.

Although tiny, the wasps perform complex mental calculations in a way scientists can’t explain. An article from the University of Exeter describes it as “stunning brainpower.”

“Our findings suggest that the miniature brain of an insect is capable of remarkably sophisticated scheduling decisions,” said Professor Jeremy Field, from the Center for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall.

“We tend to think that something so small couldn’t do something so complex.

“In fact, they can remember where and when they have fed their young, and what they fed them, in a way that would be taxing even to human brains.”

See more at Phys.org

On rare occasions, the mother wasps make an error. Although one might not think of a wasp as being an excellent mother, they surely are! They might seem an unlikely candidate for a Mother’s Day card, but deserving nonetheless.

Previous studies have shown that bumblebees play with toys, that honeybee swarms alter the electric fields of the atmosphere, and that bees and spiders may experience a dream-like state.

Super Intelligent Wild Bird Guides

In Mozambique, there’s an ordinary-looking small bird that people rely on to guide them to honey in beehives. It’s a mutual benefit that has developed over millennia. Over time, the wild birds learned that people would offer them access to beeswax and bee larvae as a reward for helping them find the nests.

These birds, known as Greater Honeyguides (Indicator indicator), use a distinct call to get the attention of human hunters as they guide them to the bees’ nest. Once they have arrived, they perch and display the white spots on their tail. As hunters set out to find honey, they make their own distinct calls to ask for the bird’s help. Somehow, Honeyguides seem to have the innate ability and interest in recognizing and responding to the human’s call.

Video by BBSRC about Honeyguides talking to people:

Honey Trap

As noted, the relationship between the Honeyguides and human honey hunters is mutually beneficial or symbiotic. However, when the person doesn’t reward the bird with its share of beeswax or pupae, are the birds capable of exacting revenge?

Recently, researchers from Africa have published a study exploring why the Honeyguides sometimes lead people to things like dangerous snakes or other animals instead! Some locals believe the birds do this because they remember when they didn’t get an ample reward for their help before. As the hunters arrive near a poisonous snake, the birds will swoop down and pose to signify they have reached the destination. It’s a different sort of honey trap!

Is this retaliation or punishment on the bird’s part? According to the study, the avian tricksters could have just as easily made a “cognitive recall error involving spatial information.” Regardless of whether it was a simple mistake or malicious, the birds ultimately reap the benefits.

“We suggest that this behavior is unlikely to function as punishment, yet may coincidentally benefit honeyguides over longer timescales by initiating a human cultural interpretation that reinforces human cultural traditions of rewarding honeyguides with beeswax,” states the study abstract.

From a benevolent perspective, the birds continue to be helpful, warning the hunters about nearby dangers. Whatever the real motive for the Honeyguides, it all points to an astonishing level of intelligence. Not only do the birds guide humans to honey, but they are also helpful to other animals, like the Honey badger. (see video below).

Video by The Wildlife TV shows a Honeyguide helping a young Honey badger find honey like a “fairy godmother.”

Featured image of a wasp on a Mother’s Day bouquet is AI-generated/Adobe