in d&d, deer have 14 wisdom. a deer is just as wise as my ranger for whom i put his second-highest ability roll in wisdom and who uses wisdom to cast most of his spells. a deer is wiser than everyone in the friendship campaign party other than erwyn, who is tied with said deer. what the fuck
in the real life deer are about as smart as 4-year-olds. they have communication, planning, and cause-and-effect intelligence. we’re also selectively breeding for smarter and smarter deer – and recently deer have been observed teaching their young to watch for traffic.
in my experience this makes deer just as wise as most frat boys.
other animals w/real-life “that’s higher than i expected” wisdom throws:
- crows (like most corvids) make us feel bad about ourselves and are about as smart as 7-year-olds. for your reference 7-year-olds understand and can confidently do multiplication tables usually up to x12 and understand fractions. crows know how to make tools and know how water displacement works.
- raccoons are also about as smart as 7-10 year olds and that’s why they wash their food before they eat it gbless
- cows, with 5-7 year old intelligence, and the fact they got bffs and like jazz music just an fyi
- coyotes, which are smarter than your dog + smarter than pigs, neither of which will be on this list bc, come on, we all know about poodles + pigs.
- we don’t even fuckken know when it comes to bears, we know they can remember as far back as 10 years + they have complex communication + social structures and are extremely adaptable but like …. ??
- we also Just Don’t Know about the octopus, who is currently engaged in some kind of undersea war
- we think elephants are self-aware. along with altruism, humor, and genuine concern, this makes them better than lots of politicians
- people always mention dolphins, chimps, parrots, and COMPLETELY overlook the true hero: pigeons, who can literally understand space and time as concepts. damn.