I saw in a zoo an interesting event: An Asian elephant was using wooden sticks to scratch its armpit, a place which it could not easily scratch with its soft trunk.
Some animals use tools, usually the very intelligent ones (and elephants are clever). I do not know if this particular elephant was an animal recovered from India where they are used for farming purposes or if it had invented the trick on its own account or perhaps was it imitating its caretakers. In any case this tool behaviour is known in elephants, according to the wikipedia.
Elephants also drink a particular type of mud in order to use its clay as a filter against the poisons of certain plants they eat. Other animals do something similar.
The use of tools by animals reflects intelligence and I wonder if intelligence is spreading by mimicry among different animals and different species, at least on a general basis.
Humans are by far the most intelligent species, and we learn from others and enlarge our knowledge and problem solving abilities by getting trained within our societies.
Are animals getting increasingly intelligent, increasingly able to sort out challenges? If so, is this happening in animals which are regularly in contact with humans? Or is it being observed also in animals completely severed from our lives?
I remember a cat of mine. He had learnt to open a difficult door to go in and out to the garden at his own will. That cat was not particularly clever but he must have seen me all the time opening the garden door and took advantage of the tuition. Also I remember my finch who used to go mad with joy when hearing violin concertos, so much that I had to take it out of the room if I wanted to listen at ease. Pet owners have delightful stories to tell. But besides their amusing side these odd stories might have a more significant meaning which could be going quite unnoticed by us, brain masters but sometimes surpirisingly blind.
Where lies the limit for animal intelligence, for the higher intellectual resources of different species, of different individuals? Are there any programs to selectively breed intelligent dogs, felines, crows, octopuses, etc? Are there any genetically engineered mice with intelligent traits?
Is animal intelligence, everything associated to mental capabilities (appreciation of different sounds, of ways to escape, to find food,...) getting increasingly enlarged since the last 10 thousand years, since animals and humans have been coexisting in not too remote proximity? Are there any fossile indications about tool use by ancient, now extinct species?
Are animals learning from us and getting more clever on a large scale?