How smart are they?
By our standards, and comparing sea lions to other animals, they are considered extremely intelligent. Most everyone is familiar with the trained sea lions in aquarium shows that are trained to do a variety of complicated tasks, such as balancing balls on their noses (actually on their vibrissae), jumping through hoops, fetching objects and doing certain behaviors on command. Many people are not aware that researchers are studying sea lions’ ability to learn a language, their memory skills, and ability to solve simple logic problems (e.g. A=B, B=C, therefore A=C). See the March 22, 1993 Time Magazine article, Can Animals Think? . However, our standards of judging intelligence should never be the final test. Sea lions are well adapted to their ocean environment; they can easily find food, escape predators, and sense what is going on in their underwater habitat. In addition, they have a complex social structure and modes of communication that we do not entirely understand.
