6 Animals With Better Memories Than You

We tend to think of ourselves as the smartest animals on earth. After all, we've built such
technological wonders as the Internet, the internal combustion engine and sneakers that light up
when you take a step. But despite our big, juicy frontal lobe, many of us still forget to pick up the
kids after practice due to our inferior memory, one area where a whole bunch of animals leave us
in the dust. For instance ...
#6. Chimpanzees' Visual Memory Can Top Yours

Try this quick test:

Glance at the image below for two seconds only. Don't cheat. Then cover it
with your hand and remember exactly where
each digit was, in order.
Can't do it? Congratulations, you just got your
ass handed to you by a chimp.
In a Kyoto University study, a bunch of chimps
were taught to count from one to nine, which is
impressive enough already, but then each of the
subjects was shown some randomly scattered
numbers on a computer screen. The numbers
were then covered and the subjects were
required to identify the position of each number in order (putting us at
Cracked at a distinct disadvantage due to our crippling inability to list
numbers in any order but descending).

Scientists attribute this impressive display of working memory to "eidetic

imagery," or what is commonly known as photographic memory. You've
probably heard that term in reference to people who remember every little
thing that's ever happened to them, but in this case it just means the chimps
seem to have a really good visual memory -- they can remember details of an
image even if they just glimpsed it for a couple of seconds.
And more amazingly, their performance did
not decrease when the time spent looking at
the image was shortened -- the chimps were
memorizing all of the numbers almost
instantaneously. Meanwhile, human subjects
who were given the same test exhibited a
steep decline in performance with the
decrease in memorization time, an infraction
that no doubt earned them a severe beating
from their chimp overlords.

#5. Sea Lions Never Forget

Quick, what is your most lucid memory from exactly 10 years ago? Let's
rephrase that -- what is your most lucid memory unrelated to that whole twin
towers thing? Do you think you could remember the details of a card trick
your uncle taught you, assuming you never saw or performed that card trick
again between then and now? If not, then you just got outdone by a sea lion.

Categorized by scientists as the cutest kind of

lion, the sea lion is usually thought of as a
lovable attention whore that will do just about
anything for a
couple of raw
fish. But while
trainers have
spent years
teaching sea
lions cheap parlor tricks, they have also
discovered that these creatures have an
amazing long-term memory, which will be
exploited in order to teach them more
cheap parlor tricks.
Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz were able to teach a sea
lion named Rio the concept of "sameness" by showing Rio a symbol and then
showing her one card with the same symbol and one with a different one. If
she correctly identified the same symbol, she was rewarded with a fish, which
she would eat with all the tear-filled shame you would expect from a sea lion
that's given up her last shred of dignity. This level of advanced cognitive
functioning is impressive in itself, but Rio's biggest feat would come a decade
later.
After 10 freaking years, Rio was given a similar test, only this time it used
numbers and letters instead of symbols. She was able to identify the
numbers and letters that were the same, despite the fact that she had not
performed the trick again at any point in the last decade. This is the longest
known retention period of any animal
species, and is all the more impressive
due to the 25-year lifespan of the sea lion.
We'll see how well you remember the
things you learned at 30 when you turn
70.
Scientists believe that this memory serves
to help sea lions identify prey that they may only encounter once every few
years. Or to help the sea lion exact horrible revenge on its slave masters
many years after the fact.

#4. An Elephant Keeps Track of Dozens of Other Elephants at Once

Getty

Here's a question for all you parents, babysitters and camp counselors:
How many infants can you keep track of at any one time? Anyone who has
spent time dealing with children knows that if you stop watching for 10
seconds, they'll be running around in traffic, making friends with savage
animals and lining up to take candy from strangers.
If you're a human being, the answer is probably around three or four. If
you're an elephant, it's more in the area of 30. Way to go, supermom!
Elephants can keep track of the
whereabouts of up to 30 family members,
regardless of their distance or direction.
They accomplish this incredible task by
creating a mental map that locates the
position of each family member, even if
some are separated from the rest of the
pachydermal pack. How do they do this?
Through their astounding ability to track
and catalogue elephant pee.

Whenever they encounter the scent of another elephant's urine, an elephant

can record in its computerish brain the location and direction of the pisser.
This enables them to devote a sizable portion of their working memory to
maintaining these expansive mental maps.

To test this, scientists gathered urine

samples from other elephants and
presented them to their relatives. When
the samples were from elephants who
were far away, or had not yet passed by
the area, the elephants reacted with
surprise. We're not sure how the scientists
detected "surprise" in elephants, but we
trust their judgment.

#3. The Octopus Can Turbocharge Its Memory

Getty

How would you like to be able to turbocharge your memory at will? College
would have been much better if we'd been able to spend every lecture at the
local bar and just flip through the textbook before the exam. It's possible, if
you're an octopus. Also possible if you're an octopus: Playing four tiny violins
at once.
But it's the memory thing we're talking about here. Unlike other
invertebrates, the octopus has a developed short-term memory and longterm memory, collectively powered by half a billion neurons. Its closest
mollusk relatives, for comparison, have around 20,000. So already they're
pretty remarkable, in that their memory works more like ours than a lobster's.

But while humans also possess a complex shortand long-term memory, the octopus is unique
because its short-term memory is directly
attached to its long-term memory. This means
that in times of high stress, where learning
quickly could mean survival, the short-term
memory can be substantially enhanced by the
long-term memory center, transforming the
octopus from lumbering beast into shifty genius.
It's like the Incredible Hulk in reverse.
Imagine being able to ratchet up your memory under pressure. You could
be the world's greatest detective, or a real-life Dr. House with an amazing
recollection of obscure medical disorders. Instead this power is going to
waste on lame octopus stuff, like performing extremely complex one-man
puppet shows.

#2. A Cat's Short-Term Memory Is 20 Times Longer Than Yours

Have you ever walked into a room and realized you can't remember what

you were going to do there? Ever put your keys down and instantly forget
where you put them? Get distracted in a conversation and forget what your
point was? That kind of thing never happens to cats, thanks to an almost
supernatural capacity for short-term memory.
As we touched on above, your memory -- and that of animals -- is divided
into two components: short term and long term. Whatever you're doing right
now is always bouncing around in your short-term memory, which is
constantly transcribing stuff into your
long-term memory. If you get distracted
at that crucial moment, then the data
might not actually carry over, and
everything in your short-term memory
gets overwritten and lost, along with the
location of your wallet. In a human being,
your short-term memory lasts a brief 30
seconds or so.
To cats, it lasts at least 10 minutes.
Scientists discovered this when they ran some simple tests in which they
would get a cat to half-step over an obstacle and then quickly distract the
shit out of it, likely by dangling car keys in front of its face. They recorded the
amount of time that they had to distract it for before the cat lost track of
what it was supposed to be doing in the first place. They realized,
astoundingly, that the kitty retained its short-term memory 10 to 20 times
longer than most other animals.

For comparison, dangle your keys in front of your spouse's face while
they're trying to concentrate on something, and they're likely to become
confused and irritable in a matter of seconds. Try it.
#1. The Clark's Nutcracker Bird Is Freaking Amazing

Quick, tell us the location of every coin on your property right now, including
the ones resting between sofa cushions and on the
floorboard of your car. Tell us exactly how many paper
clips you own, and where they are right this moment.
Hell, do you even know where your shoes are?
Because you wouldn't catch a certain bird called the
Clark's nutcracker forgetting any of that.
With a name like the Clark's nutcracker, you know at least
two things are true -- the bird cracks a lot of nuts, and
some guy named Clark wanted to get in on that. But what
this bird lacks in a decent, non-candy-bar name it more
than makes up for with its amazing memory. While other animals can make
you look stupid by remembering nine digits or 30 family members, this
unassuming little bird is able to remember the exact location of up to 30,000
pine nuts.

The bird spends the fall gathering pine nuts and just hiding them around
the damn place like an
unsupervised
toddler. Later, in the
winter, when
everything is blanketed
by a thick layer of
snow, it digs them up
again to keep
itself alive over the long
months. The
Clark's nutcracker is able
to accomplish
this winter gorging
through the use
of a sophisticated spatial
memory, which
allows it to recall
landmarks, such
as trees, to pinpoint the
locations of
several thousand caches in a 15-mile area. This means they not only have a
better memory than you, but they're also much less lazy than you.
And if that's not enough, the Clark's nutcracker's hippocampus, the part of
the brain associated with spatial memory, continues to produce neurons into
adulthood. So while your memory just fades with age, the bird's is just
getting better.