When you look at the dumb people of humanity, you really have to wonder how we became the most powerful species on the planet. It certainly wasn't for our intelligence. There are many smart animals that can outwit humans.

Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees and many other ape species are some very smart animals. They can fashion simple tools to go termite fishing with a fair amount of effectiveness. Unlike dumb people who aren’t quite as resource and have to have fancy equipment, lures and poles to go fishing. Chimps just take a branch and strip the leaves off and start looking in the right places. Then, they dip it into a termite nest and when the angry termites bite the stick, easily draw out the termite-laden snack and munches away on pure protein.

People have been trying for years to simulate the chimpanzee's termite-fishing stick, but have not been able to do so instead focusing their efforts on the dumb, usually over complicated tools of today. Perhaps that's because animals are smarter than humans. Either that, or all of the scientists that have been trying to reproduce the chimp's fishing pole are stupid.

Termites

And what about those termites that the chimps are eating? Even termites are smarter than humans at times. How do we know this? Because of their incredible engineering powers. Teeny-tiny termites can regularly cooperate with millions other of their kind to build mounds of mud and saliva that are up to thirty feet high. In comparison, we dumb people would have to build a skyscraper about two miles high to accomplish the equivalent.

But, of course, we can't – not so much in that we don’t have the know-how, but that we just can’t figure out how to cooperate with others on a construction site.

And one last note about termites – they're completely blind.

Leafcutter Ants

But we have it going in the agriculture department, right? We invented farming, didn’t we? Not so fast. People are just too dumb to figure this stuff out on their own. Chances are that our ancestors looked to the tiny ant in order to figure out how to grow food because the dumb process they were using didn’t work. In particular, they probably looked at the many species of ants collectively known as leafcutter ants.

Leafcutter ants harvest plant materials – but they can't digest plants. But they have figured a way to make food from the indigestible plants, anyway. They lick each piece clean, nibble around the edges and then stick the plant in a compost area inside of their colony. As the plant rots, it grows a fungus. It's the fungus that the ants eat.

How smart is that? They can easily find the raw material for their food, which cannot be grown by any other means or eaten by any other creature. Unlike stupid people, ants also are smart enough not to complain about eating the same thing every day.