How smart are shrews?

Answer 1

It's a funny topic but there is a point here when it comes to how smart shrews really are. For example, a whale is huge and therefore, has a huge brain. So how come aren't they smarter than humans. So if you look up EQ(as in how smart you are eg. your EQ) or brain-to-body mass ratio on wikipedia, it explains how the size of a brain compared to the body mass effects the cognitive abilities of an animal. Meaning a whale has such a huge brain because it has much more motor functions to handle. In the wikipedia article you'll also find a rough list starting from top to bottom the animals of which that have a higher to lower brain-to-body mass ratio. Humans are of course on top of this list making us the most intelligent beings on the earth. Making sense since, we have such large brains compared to such small body masses.

But now we come to the myth of the smart shrew. Again, on the wikipedia article you'll of course find mice and rats close to the bottom of the "EQ" list. But the shrew which is a type of mouse like mammal, has 10% of it's body mass in it's brain. Which surprisingly, is even more than that of a human or any other animal on the earth. So scientifically speaking, shrews should be smart, even smarter than humans.

I haven't found a real answer to this question as there really isn't any articles on the intelligence of shrews, but hopefully more research will be done and published on the topic at which point I will update.