I'm hard of hearing. I wear hearing aids. I don't wear them when I'm sleeping, though, obviously.

I used to live with Nushi the cat. Sometimes, things would happen in the middle of the night and I'd miss them, because I didn't hear them. The first time this happened, the dog had locked herself in the laundry room and was whining. At first Nushi tried to wake me up by jumping on me and then running to the area of the problem. I thought, "Nice, she's gone, I can go back to sleep!" Totally missed the message.

So Nushi ran to the laundry room door and started screaming. "MEEEEROWWOOOO! MROOOWOWW!"

That was too obnoxious to ignore, so I went to the laundry room door and heard the dog whining. I let her out.

Nushi also alerted me to my phone vibrating, the toilet overflowing, and someone's fireworks starting the grass nearby on fire. (The fire was no danger; there was a creek between the grass and the townhomes.)

She learned that standing by something and making a crapload of obnoxious noise is the way to get me to address it when I can't hear it myself.

My cat Tim used to steal food off your plate when he was a kitten. We got a squirt gun. He learned pretty fast that the Xbox was a safe zone. He could scope out the situation by the xbox and use it for cover if his plan didn't work.

We lived in an old house with a lot of hallways and I could hear my roommate yelling at him about the food he had just made. Finally he gets the squirt gun and chases him. He gets to my room and asks if the cat came this way. I said I haven't seen him and my roommate's face drops, very "Mother of God" like.

He runs back to where he was eating to find a missing chicken breast. The cat lured him away from the food and hid in a box when he got around a corner giving him just enough time to take the chicken breast before the roommate got back to his plate.

Not even mad.

My dog, in her old age, used to bang her head on doors until we opened them for her in a doggy version of knocking.

In the middle of the night if she wanted to go out I'd hear "boof...boof..." so I would get out of bed and she would be waiting patiently by the door.

If she wanted something that didn't involve a door she could knock on, she would start by huffing gently and then slowly working her way up to a bark. It was very considerate of her.

Then again, she once got stuck in a bush (and she was a big dog) so maybe she wasn't that smart.

My horse would get bored sometimes, so he'd let himself out of his stall and then let all of the other horses he liked out of theirs. We had to devise new ways of securing his door fairly often because he would figure it out every time.

We had a dog who was elderly and had gone blind. He was always bumping in to things, and liked to be led by his humans, and had to be constantly touched to let him know he was safe to walk where he was walking. One day I heard his pitter-patter coming down the hardwood floors of the hallway from my bedroom, where I'd left him, into the kitchen, where I was.

I'd hear him take 3 or so steps, stop, then 3 more, and so on. I went to him to see what was going on. That's when I saw my other dog leading the blind dog down the hallway. He'd move forward, stop, and wait for the blind dog to catch up to him. Then the blind dog would touch his nose to the leg of my other dog, they'd move forward. So on and so forth. No one taught these dogs how to do this, so I was amazed. The little blind doggie has since passed.

Bees are...not so smart when it comes to not drowning. You keep their water bowl shallow and with rough edges and lots of rocks in it for standing on, but some still fall in.

So one day I see a drowning lady in the water dish and I'm about to scoop her out when I see two others save her instead.

The two bees were on one of the rocks and they faced one another and held each other's legs, then and as a unit, backed down the rock until the farthest bee's back legs were in reach of the drowning bee. She grabbed on, then as a unit they scooted back up the rock until she was outta the water, then they helped her dry off.

Bees are amazing and fascinating and I've seen some cool stuff in a hive, but that right there was next level awesome.

I was once showing a video to a friend of something funny my dog did (I am that friend) and while watching it on my TV the same dog walks into the room, looks at the TV, gets visibly confused and then walks to the real life place the video took place to investigate what was going on.

To have the intelligence to understand the situation enough to be confused by it blew me away.

I give my dogs beef marrow bones a couple of times a week. These can be messy so I put a couple of towels on the floor and the dogs know to keep their bones on the towels. All I did to train that was remove any bone that ended up off the towel, both dogs learned very quickly how the rule worked. That's not the smartest part.

My standard poodle didn't have access to the bones but he could reach the towels. When he wanted it to be "bone night" he'd go drag out two towels and bring them to the living room, then look at me and wait for me to do my part.

My cat can operate the recliner, turn on/off the faucet, open doors, turn off lights, and defeat her food dispenser (she found the button that dispenses regardless of the timer).

At this point, it's like having a fat, furry roommate.

I dog sit and most of the dogs I look after are pretty average. Adorable and loving, but average. However, a few weeks ago I sat a couple of kelpies. It was only for a couple days but I quickly realised the girl was extraordinarily smart and the owner hadn't noticed.

When we went to the beach I didn't have to put a leash on either of them (it was a leash-free beach, no worries). I could tell them where I wanted them to go and not repeat it. But the boy was hopeless when it came to fetch. He could get but not give, so instead when he dropped it the girl could pick it up and drop it elsewhere. I thought she was just as hopeless, but as we walked I noticed she would drop it ahead and pretty much every time it had rolled down the slope of the beach to right where I had just reached.

This dog was calculating how fast I was walking and how long it'd take for the ball to roll down the sand to where I would be by the time I got there. She didn't just drop it directly in my path because it would have rolled away into the water by then.

On top of that, she would go wash the ball off in the water for me and never leave it behind. She knew she was responsible for that ball and not to leave it behind.

My cockatoo would take macadamia nuts still in the shell and throw them out of her cage. When the cat would pounce on it she would throw another a little closer. The cat would pounce on the new one. Then she would just very carefully drop a third one out of her cage, the cat would pounce and the bird would grab the cat's tail and yank. The bird would do this once a week or so, and the cat would never learn.

Same bird would also have a sheet over her cage when it was night time and we would tell her "it's bedtime" when we put it on. Her cage was in the living room and she would chew small eye-holes in the blanket and watch movies with us at night. You could see her little eye in the hole. If she didn't like the movie, or if there was a really loud scene, she would put her beak to the hole and say "it's bedtime". If it was an action movie she would say it loud and indignantly, and if it was a scary movie she would say it softly.

My dog, is not allowed in the kitchen. We have hardwood flooring throughout the house, so it's really easy to hear when he's walking around. Well one day, it got quiet. I was suspicious so I started looking for him. I walked by the kitchen, and saw him out of the corner of my eye, walking super weird. I stopped, and watched, and I realized he was walking on the pads of his feet, so his claws wouldn't make any noise.

I have three dogs: an Australian Shepherd, a Basset hound, and a sheltie mix. My sheltie mix is so smart. If you tell the sheltie to "Go get (other dogs name)!" she will go and get them. And she knows the difference between the Aussie and the basset.

Also, the sheltie is very protective over my mom. So she's always at my mom's feet or right next to her on the couch. If another dog gets too close, she will growl and snarl at them. When she does this and my mom tells her to stop it, the sheltie will actually somewhat pet the dog she was originally growling at. It's so cute.

When I was in high school I had about 9ish friends over to play airsoft in my yard. For those unfamiliar, airsoft is like paintball, you shoot little pellets at each other and pretend you're all a SWAT team.

Anyway, in between matches my friends and I take a rest during which my Mom brings out snacks and drinks (thanks Mom!). My dog also ran out of the house with her, and he was bent on getting those snacks. At first it wasn't so hard for 10 high-school boys to just make a defensive perimeter around the snacks, but we were completely ignoring our airsoft gear. My dog picked up my friend's airsoft rifle like it was a stick and bolted.

At first 9 of us laughed as my friend ran after my dog, but that dog spun and ran circles around him. Soon we had to send more and more people after him, but that dog didn't give a damn. He would run right at your knees until you crouched and then jump body slam you're lowered face just to rub in his absolute mastery of "catch me if you can."

Finally we all decided that we had to circle this dog. From all sides we penned him in and slowly began to constrict. If he moved we moved in formation, not trying to stop him but just trying to keep him between us.

Now, finally knowing he is caught, my dog drops the airsoft rifle and sits down. Finally! We've corralled him! My friend breaks the ranks pick up his rifle and the moment he hits center circle, my dog just bolts straight for the house. Oh well, we think -- we've got what we want. No big deal. And then we look up. The house is a good 30 meters away, and the snacks are all completely unprotected.

My dog pulled of a successful bait and switch against 10 boys reenacting tactical warfare-and we just stood there, completely exhausted and dumbfounded.

When she was just old enough and came home I watched my kitten look at a mirror, go to touch the cat in there, look at her paw, wave it, look in the mirror, wave her paw again...and then she was fine with reflections. Years later when her brother was freaking out at a mirror I temporarily placed on the floor I watched her try to calm him down by waving and basically...pointing.

The smartest moment though? Right after he attacked his reflection again she walked away with a stiff "Idiot...." look on her face.

How many humans do you know that are smart enough to not argue with stupid?

Dogs used to pack-hunt my lunch like a bunch of Raptors.

One would whelp, fake an injury, when I'd go over to check on him the other would run, jump up on my chair, grab my sandwich and run away and hide with it. As I'd spin to stop him "hurt boy" would run away and join him.

Those little turds did it once and I was just confused.

Second time they did it was a couple of weeks later, instant reaction was to check out doggy 1 the faker again, then as the alarm bell that we'd been here before started ringing in my head doggy 2 executed the plan again.

Third time I was onto them.

Clever boys.

I once watched a grackle (dark-colored bird native to South Texas) trying to get a half a bagel out of a small paper bag. The bag was kind of crumpled at the top and the grackle was having no luck.

After a couple of minutes of trying it walked around to the back side of the bag, grabbed the bottom with its beak, and picked up the bag, dumping the bagel onto the street.

I thought it was pretty neat watching this bird come upon a challenge and figure out a solution.

One of our cats wants to eat at 4:30 every morning. And wants NEW food. Leaving food out isn't good enough.

So he comes into the bed and starts nuzzling the face. If you ignore him, he jumps down and walks back and forth in the vertical blinds making the rattling noise. If you manage to ignore that, he jumps up, bites to corner of the comforter and literally pulls it completely off the bed (it has a satin sheen and slides easily).

At that point my husband cannot ignore and he gets up and feeds that cat.

If I am home alone and continue to ignore it, he goes over to the closet door and bangs on it. If that wakes up my son, he will go feed it. If that doesn't work, he goes to my son's door and bangs on that until he my son wakes up, feeds him and the cat wins.

The cat does this in the exact order every time.

I am the only one that doesn't give in.

I had two border collies. One was the dumbest and most easily scared dog I've ever had (but really good at herding sheep)

The other one was probably the smartest dog I'll ever own. The first few weeks that we had them, they would steal food off the table. So we tied a string around a small metal pan lid. The other end, we tied around a piece of ham, so that when they grabbed the piece of ham, they would pull the pan lid off the table and scare them enough so that they wouldn't do it again.

My dumb dog Tarzan was the first one to try it. Nellie was out for a walk so that she couldn't catch on. He went straight for it, pulled down the lid, scared him witless. He never took food from the table ever again.

Then it was Nellie's turn. We were all watching, excited to she if she's go for it or not. She calmly walked up to the table, stood on her hind legs. She then looked at the lid, then followed the string with her eyes, looked at the piece of ham. Then she ate the ham off of both sides of the string, not pulling on the string even the slightest. Then, just to add insult to injury, she removed the tiny piece of ham, still inside the knot of the string, with her canines, and then walked away. So smug.