As to intelligence, interspecies comparisons are complicated by the fact that different species have evolved intelligences that are adapted to their respective ecologies. In the bat ecology, for example, a bat is much smarter than a person. The standard impression that humans are overall smarter than other animals must therefore resort to indirect types of evidence and argument if it is to be convincing. For over a century, scholars have proposed myriad ways in which humans are cognitively unique, not only when compared with other mammals but even compared with our large-brained extinct cousins, the Neanderthals. Here, the emerging consensus is that besides similarities and continuities between animal and human cognition, there are also radical differences, mainly in the domain of symbolic reasoning (Penn et al., 2012). As to the Neanderthals' inability to reason symbolically, the smart choice is not to jump to conclusions.