Here's a picture I took last week of chickens and ducks.

While the chickens did not group together, the ducks moved about in a tight group, almost as if they were controlled by a single brain. Initially, this moving-around-together business struck me as more "stupid" than the randomized movement of the chickens. But then, we are talking about ducks and chickens, not humans. When I asked about the ducks I was told that predatory animals had recently raided the collective pen that holds the chickens and the ducks, and that the ducks had formed tight groupings since then, but the chickens hadn't.

This made me wonder which are smarter: chickens or ducks? Not that it's an earthshaking question (especially with a national election looming), but the answer isn't exactly staring at me.

Something about the ducks' tight groupings shortly after the predatory raid suggested intelligence to me in a way that the random behavior of the chickens did not. Various web sites assert that ducks are smarter than chickens, but they don't say exactly why. Ducks and geese are a lot more closely related to each other than either are to chickens, and I found a fascinating account of geese actually protecting chickens:

As the weeks passed and the chickens grew to full size the goslings just kept growing, a part of the chicken flock but much larger, twice as big, with long necks and a waddle. And we discovered an interesting thing about geese, they are smarter than chickens, almost as smart as dogs, it seemed. They seemed less driven by predictable instinct, more prone to personality and individuality.

And they were beautiful. Sleek, long, white, just great looking birds. They were the class of the flock and we all became very fond of them.

One night in the dark we heard a great fuss from the coop, honking and clucking and honking and hissing, and we ran to see what the problem was.

A skunk had gotten in, intent on killing and eating a chicken, and it was trying to attack. The chickens were huddled in the corner and a goose stood warily in front of them, shifting one way and then the other while the second goose stood across the floor, directly in front of the marauder, hissing at it and striking at it with its bill. They were defending the chickens. They stood between them and danger, and used their size and their courage to protect the henhouse.

It was one of the most stirring things I've ever seen an animal do. It earned the geese a special place in our hearts.

In an anecdote involving alligators, another author asserts that ducks are smarter than geese:

David & Jeff are a wonderful couple of guys who live in this big house on 36-acres in the midst of trees dripping with Spanish moss. They even have a pond with ducks. Unfortunately, they also have alligators right now, two of them, one a couple of feet long, the other four or five feet long. They used to have a few geese, too, but apparently, the ducks are smarter...

Various hunting sites proclaims that ducks are smarter than we think. They've learned how to avoid human hunters. (It's interesting that even though their survival rate is poor, domestic ducks have managed to become pests in parks and lakes. I think such a feat would be inconceivable for chickens.)

I think it's fair to conclude that ducks are smarter than chickens. Beyond that, I'm not feeling Orwellian enough to commit anthropomorphism.