Animal Brainiacs: The World's Smartest Animals

10. Squirrels

Food — hunting it and keeping it — turns the most unlikely animals into geniuses. In a famous Mission Impossible-themed video, a persistent squirrel overcomes a very difficult obstacle course to reach a bowl of nuts. Researchers at the University of California Berkeley are trying to determine how the campus wild squirrels decide which nuts to bury and which to eat at once. The animals stash their winter supplies in hundreds of caches, and the researchers still have not worked out how they choose the spots or find them later.