I've been at a meeting for four days and haven’t had a a chance to weigh in on the animal intelligence issue. So to go back a bit, I have a comment on that. Creationists, and others also, usually tend to consider “intelligence” as a mental trait universal to the animal kingdom and endowed to different species at various levels of strength and competency. Humans, of course, are at the top of the ladder and then the degree of intellectual capacity extends downward along the rungs of the intellectual ladder with chimpanzees and the other great apes, who are most like humans, on the second rung and then all the way down to the soft. squishy species that have no central distinctive brain. Evolutionists know that this is not the way it works.
The first thing that people in the fields of science, industry, law (and supposedly politics and government) do when they enter project planning and discussions is to define their terms, and this is always important. The terms usually associated with the definition of intelligence are abstract thought, language, self awareness, learning, planning memory IQ, creativity, logic, communication of abstract ideas, retention of knowledge and the ability to construct new concepts from varied information. Although a few of these terms can be marginally identified with various species of animals only the human species puts all of them into the bag labeled intelligence. But many successful animal species seem to reflect some of these characteristics, even to a greater extent then humans, and thus seem to have various levels of “intelligence” within and between species. More accurately, however, the Darwinian term “fitness” is appropriate. Every species of animal, humans included, fit into an ecological niche. The better they fit is due to the better that they have evolved the physical, mental, and behavioral traits that enhance survival of their gene pool (their species), and this betters the short term and usually the long term survival of that species. The way we humans define “intelligence” when we apply it anthropomorphically to other animal species has absolutely no bearing, meaning. or functional application in describing the mental characteristics of other species that have independently evolved the biology, ecology, and behavior that compose that species.
However each individual member of every species (as a rule) is genetically different; which is absolute scientific fact well documented in the last 60 years of genetic science. These genetic differences are expressed not only in morphology but also in mental ability within the capacity of the genetic structure of that species. The separation and recombination of genetic codes during sexual reproduction assures that each individual is distinct. Thus each individual has, mostly in small ways, a differing “fitness” including mental capacity that adapts it to its environment and the behavior of its species. Thus the term “degree of fitness”, including mental traits, is far more appropriate to describe animal “intelligence”, and as an assessment of mental capacity it is a functional description only within the behavior of each species. Thus comparison of individual fitness, including variable mental traits (intelligence), of individuals of each species is relevant only within that species and each gene pool of each species contains the coding of the mental traits that provide a functional mental capacity for that species.