About halfway through William Faulkner’s occasionally hilarious novel, The Reivers, 11 year-old narrator, Lucius Priest, holds forth on the relative intelligence (which he defines as “the ability to cope with environment”) of non-human animals.
He ranks the rat number one because “He lives in your house without helping you buy it or build it or repair it or keep the taxes paid; he eats what you eat without helping you raise it or buy it or even haul it into the house.”
The mule is second because, among other traits, “he will not enter any place unless he knows of his own knowledge what is on the other side,” and most tellingly, because “he will work for you patiently for ten years for the chance to kick you once.”
Cat comes in number three; dog is fourth, and horse, “a creature capable of but one idea at a time,” is rated last of the lot.
All of this assumes, of course, that humans possess an intelligence beyond these five, which, at times—give our penchant for self-destructive behavior and our shared fascination with Presidential tweets—seems like a dicey proposition.
On the other hand, (channeling how Lucius himself might have put it):
"No other creature than homo sapiens has such a genius for having fun.
"Ain’t no rats out there that lay down 150 feet of plastic in a sylvan glade to go hurling themselves over its watery surface just for shits n’ giggles.
"And no mule never done filled a child’s swimming pool with slippery goo so as to rassle around in it with friends and loved ones, that’s for sure.
"And while small rodents will find their way into basement or attic through the smallest crack if you leave a predictable source of food out, I’m sure as shootin’ that none of them ever figured out how to scientifically dose packages of fruit juice with grain alcohol via 30CC syringe.
"Take that, you rats, boom!"
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