Some people’s level of intelligence might have many of us mere mortals in awe, a little envious or feeling inspired to boost our own brain power. Then there are those who are so insanely bright that it’s actually creepy.
We’re not talking about well-read folk, or those who nail pub quiz every week. We are referring to that rare, off-the-charts, stop-everyone-in-their-tracks type of intelligence that is both a wonder and a ‘WTH?!’ to witness. They’re almost uncomfortably smart.
Someone recently asked, “What’s the creepiest display of intelligence you’ve ever witnessed in real life?” and more than the square root of 12,250,000 answers came flooding in. That’s over 3,500 replies in case you were wondering. Our brilliant Bored Panda team has dissected all of them to bring you only the best in the listicle that follows.
Expect stories about eidetic memory, Aphantasia, polyglots, whiz kids and even animals wowing people with the way their brains operate. From a guy who struggled to read but taught himself college chemistry from a textbook in one evening, to a child with an intellectual disability who could put a 500-piece puzzle together with the pieces are flipped to the blank side (no imagery to fit together), some of these tales could give Albert Einstein a run for his money.
#1
I met two people with eidetic memory as far as I know. They both had the same habit of answering a question: pausing, looking upwards as if they were reading something in the air, and then answer.
One I met was in the Army. My first meeting with him, he noticed my last name and said, “Oh, that’s Japanese,” paused, looked at the ceiling, and then started speaking to me in Japanese. I told him it was a Japanese last name but I was Mexican-American. Again, he paused, looked up, and then started speaking to me in Spanish.
Later, he picked up quite a bit of German in just a couple of months. He was definitely a polyglot. I believe he also became Soldier of the Month three months running but was asked to not do it again.
The funniest thing was he had very little social graces. He was a very good looking guy and always smiled. People would approach him but after a few minutes they would leave, looking at him like he was an alien. I have to admit, he could have been but I still miss him.
Image source: whiskytangophil, EyeEm / freepik (not the actual photo)
An IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test is the most common way to check how smart someone is. It measures human cognitive abilities, like reasoning, logic, memory, and problem-solving.
Most people have a score of between 85 and 115. Anything above 116 is considered “above average,” and in the past, those with scores over 140 were classified as “near” genius or genius, though that terminology has been done away with. Highly intelligent people are today considered “gifted.”
#2
A guy I was friends with ended up working in a car yard – it wasn’t a big brand one, just a small family owned second hand car yard – guy did ok in school, wasn’t a genius, wasn’t an idiot. I dropped in to visit him at work after he’d been working there for about 6 years and his boss called out asking if he could remember a car and added the registration number (no description or anything) and my mate rattled off the car’s details, the name of the person who traded it in, what they bought, and who bought it, by name… but phrased it as a question: “you mean the blue toyota whatever, with the such and such, that so and so came in with etc” this had all happed about six months after he’d started there.
He clearly found his place.
(For clarity – the car his boss was asking about had been traded/sold 5 and a half years earlier)
(And no, not ‘creepy’ like they’re going to put you in a pit and make you put lotion on, just a moment of realising someone you’d known your whole childhood suddenly pulls a rainman out of nowhere)
(Yes, he’s most likely on the spectrum – it’s probably why we were friends in the first place).
Image source: elroyonline, Domiflicks / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#3
My husband grew up in a bad area, bad family, high school drop out bc school was so bad for people with learning disabilities. He grew up truly believing he was stupid.
I’m a writer, and he would never read. Complained that he couldn’t read. Not a lack of ability, but he apparently has that thing where you can’t visualize in your head — but no word for it 30 years ago, and I didn’t even realize that was a possible thing. He just told me he can’t see the story like I can, so it doesn’t make any sense for him. He found it difficult and pointless.
Then, at 20 years old, he sat down and read a college chemistry textbook left at our house *in one evening* and literally taught himself chemistry. I was a “gifted” student with a full scholarship, and chemistry was where I got lost AF. I could not understand what i was seeing.
“I don’t have to imagine with this book. It just explains. Easiest book I’ve ever seen!”
🤯.
Image source: HotAsElle, wayhomestudio / freepik (not the actual photo)
IQ tests date back to the early 1900s, when a French psychologist called Alfred Binet came up with a test to identify students who were in need of extra assistance in school. It was Binet, who developed the concept of “mental age.”
“Children of certain age groups quickly answered specific questions,” explains the VeryWell Mind site. “Some children could respond to the questions typically answered by children of an older age, so these children had a higher mental age than their actual chronological age.”
The psychologist thus based his intelliegence test on the average abilities of children of a particular age group. Today’s tests have since evolved but the foundation remains the same.
#4
Worked with an Australian guy on Op Iraqi Freedom in. 2006, this guy was a comms tech and noticed every day around lunchtime Baghdad time the fibre cable link back to Australia would degrade. Only 15 minutes at a time. He worked it out over a couple of weeks to sunlight in a Singaporean data centre shining through a window onto a router with a failed cooling fan. Would overheat the router and increase the data error rate, slowing the data link.
The Royal Mumford i doff my cap to you sir…
Image source: Fun_Cellist3964, NOAA / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#5
I knew a kid who had an intellectual disability. He was non verbal and needed 1 to 1 support all day, every day.
However, pull out a 500 piece puzzle, he puts it together upside down.
As in… the pieces are flipped *to the blank side*. No imagery to fit together.
Extremely fascinating to watch, never seen anything like it!
Image source: honey_bee_bee_, Davit Margaryan / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#6
My old cat Minos, over the course of a few days arranged “gifts for the family” among the bushes in our front yard. 3 mice were arranged in a line in the back row with all their heads facing north and 4 rats were arranged in a line in the front row with their heads facing south. One of the weirdest things I’ve ever had to clean up.
Image source: Asphalt_feet, Uriel Soberanes / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
If you’ve ever taken an IQ test, you might have realized that it’s not really something you can study for. And that’s because these tests aren’t intended to measure knowledge of any specific subject or field.
Rather, they assess things like logic, spatial awareness, verbal reasoning, and visual abilities. Your score is based on your ability (or lack thereof) to use logic to solve problems, recognize patterns, and to make quick connections between different points of information.
#7
Miriam. A friend introduced me to her at a party. She was a math major. She had gotten into a bet with her roommate to see who could memorize pi to the most digits. She won, by *thousands* of digits.
My friend said “Hey Miriam! Do pi!”
Her eyes went glassy and she went 3.1415926535….. She went on for minutes.
Image source: BoredBSEE, Ryan Jacobson / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#8
I did a little time. I ran into a guy in there that engineered a fight between three unrelated parties. That part wasn’t the creepy part (though, good enough, really – two of the three fighting parties were *not* fighting people and he got ’em in the mix effortlessly). The creepy part was that in the roughly one minute before the fight kicked off (resulting in the block being locked down for three days, btw) he explained to me point by point and in close detail what the administrational response would be, exactly who would be involved, who would be written up, injured, reassigned to different blocks, etc. He did this so that a fourth party, not involved in the violence, would be caught up in cell searches with contraband, which happened. A tattoo kit. That guy left the block with the three fighters but never came back.
He told me all of this stuff point by point like a grocery list. Down to which guards would come and what their moods and reactions would be. He was in the cell next to mine and he just kept laying it out right until they locked us in.
Image source: Economy_Field9111, Umanoide / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#9
I worked with a DJ who knew the station’s entire catalog by heart. “Oh, you want to hear ‘Please, Mr. Postman’? That’s CD 472, Track 5.” He was never wrong! And it made board op-ing with him so much easier.
Image source: marylennox1, engin akyurt / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
At one point, it appeared that humans in general were becoming more intelligent. But interestingly, that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. A study conducted in 2023 found that there’s been a marked dipped in intelligence scores among U.S. adults.
“This doesn’t necessarily mean that Americans are becoming less intelligent, however,” notes VeryWell Mind. “Instead, this reversal may be due to cultural or environmental changes. Changes in test-taking tendencies or abilities may also cause it.”
#10
We were studying and she recognized a young man from an anatomy textbook. She said it was from her 3rd grade math book. We didn’t belive her and made fun of her, so one day she showed up with that book. Same young man, totally different pose and environment. Obviously some stock photos. She still works in medicine, but works with the police several times a year for super-recognizer screenings or whatever that’s called.
When we would go out, she would see someone and just go: ah, this guy was at the lake 4 years ago when we were there. We all just stopped confirming with those people because she was always right and it was always creepy.
Image source: reedshut, Daily Nouri / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#11
I had a classmate once who could do complex equations in her head. She was asked to solve an equation of the whiteboard once (with working) but only wrote the answer. When the teacher asked her to show how she got to the answer, she just said “I can’t”. Of course the teacher made her do a few more, and yep, all right.
The scariest part is supposedly her sister was even smarter than her.
Image source: lumoslomas, Jeswin Thomas / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#12
Working for a city in traffic engineering, we had a large map on a wall where we would place pins with colored heads to represent types of accidents from police accident reports, for example pedestrian related, property damage only, death, etc. Instead of bringing the stack of reports and working out each pin and exact location individually, one legendary lady would go in and stick the pins from memory. This was not a small city!
One engineer was incredulous and asked how she could remember so many. She became offended when he checked her work and found she got every one right.
I didn’t witness it but I believe him, and i can’t imagine how she did it!
Image source: madhousechild, GeoJango Maps / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#13
I used to be friends with someone who’s a talented hacker. He mostly worked to find vulnerabilities in security systems to collect bounties in return.
One day, he showed me the less legal side of what he could do if he wanted to and it was crazy. Taught me a lot about how vulnerable devices etc can be.
It all admittedly scared me a bit, as he could easily ruin someone’s life if he decided to.
I wouldn’t have wanted to make him mad at any point, that’s for sure. Tbh, I’m pretty glad we don’t talk anymore! Lol.
Image source: zTPZz, Wesley Tingey / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#14
I grew up with a guy. one day we were after school finishing a biology project, we had a calculation for so random variables, 6 digit divided by two digit, like 179485/67 or some stuff. I typed it in the calculator, and before I said it to the team he gave me the answer. I knew this guy had a weird it smart brain, didn’t know the full extent until now, and I asked him hot the hell did you know that?? He told me he did the calculation once as an 9 year old, and also he remembered it because it was matching to his favorite ### for a specific car model, and it stuck with him. I grew up with this guy for 20 years and knew he was wicked smart but it always stuck in my mind.
He also told me that he studied his old sisters AP biology book before he took the class, for fun. Our teacher was a real hard as about consistent homework in that class, but if you passed the AP test you automatically got a passing grade in the class. He never turned in a single piece of homework and got a 5 on the test. Dude was wicked.
Image source: a_Doozie, Aaron Lefler / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#15
My old cat who was the eldest of 4 cats I had was wicked smart. He was insanely clean. We had 2 large litter boxes for the 4 cats. He made the 3 younger girls copy his habits and they used 1 litter box only for pee and the other only for p*o. I swore up and down to my partner who at the time didn’t believe me he could understand English but when I asked sarcastically to get the kitten out from behind the drawer he just looked at me. Went to the drawer, had a “conversation” with the kitten and she came right out! We had tried for hours! If my partner didn’t see it with her own eyes lol.
Image source: Unrigg3D, Lia / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#16
Not really creepy but I noticed there must be something going on.
I was on holidays in a Turkish wakeboard park. They have some dogs there, which were strays but living there in the park now. Super friendly doggos.
One morning, we wanted to get up a hill for the sunrise. When we stepped out, two of the dogs slept in front of our house. They woke up and immediately understood what we were up to. They lead the way up the hill.
When we were up there, one of them was sitting down and staring into the sunrise with me. Nothing else. He just looked at the shiny orb in the skies. This dog was not lead by food, companionship or anything. He was just there. Probably admiring the sunrise, too. Nothing a dull animal would be able to.
Image source: Kaibaer, Laura Mann / Unspleash (not the actual photo)
#17
I don’t know if it counts as creepy, but my old music mentor is a polyglot who triple majored at Yale in his early teens. He has various sorts of command of over 20 languages. When I was working with him, he got permission—unheard of for white dudes—to enter the inner sanctum of the holiest Zoroastrian sites in India and Iran to study their texts and eventually set them to music.
I house sat for him while he was gone. When he came back, I asked him when he’d found time to learn the language because he’s always busy AF, plus the whole dead language aspect. “Oh I just studied on the plane. How are my cats? Don’t be late to rehearsal tonight.”
I had another mentor who could extemporize *anything* on the guitar. Like, he’d reference a passage in a violin concerto and just start playing a reduction of it on the guitar. Sometimes he’d transpose it to be in the same key of whatever I was studying. And I saw him play a piece from memory after *hearing* it once, he didn’t glance at the score at all (the score was a recently discovered 19th century piece that he hadn’t heard of before. This happened in a master class I attended.).
Image source: CommunicationTop5231, freepik (not the actual photo)
#18
Friend’s brother. He’s an Englishman, a linguist, went with my friend to Norway for a conference (my friend went with to hang out and be a tourist). He didn’t speak any Norwegian before he went, on day 3 he could read it and order at the restaurant and conduct their business in Norwegian, by the end of the week he was fluent.
He told me that Hollywood style universal eidetic memories are bull but some people have specialized ones – in his case he can remember every single thing he has ever read, down to location on the page. He won’t be able to tell you *when* he read it or anything like that, just the actual content.
Conversely, he doesn’t understand machines at all. Friend found him one day making coffee in the frying pan he’d just made eggs in because he couldn’t figure out the coffee machine.
Image source: Morbanth, Hoi An and Da Nang Photographer / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#19
I dated a woman years ago whose father attended college at the ripe old age of 14. He finished a couple of years later and, after starting a graduate program, was poached by the U.S. military (something I didn’t even know they did and had never heard of prior to that). He subsequently joined the military, completed his graduate program, and began working with satellite-based laser defense systems. All this by his early 20’s. These days he leads research teams doing things not even his wife knows about, holds several patents and PhD’s, is a retired Colonel, and personally addresses the President’s admin from time to time at the White House.
When I met him, I asked him about his genius. He described his state-of-thinking with an analogy. “While most people are able to imagine one or two things at the same time, I am able to imagine four or five simultaneously.” He also had an eidetic memory. I asked him to show me. They had a library in their home and he asked me to grab any one of the thousands of books from the wall without him seeing, read a random passage to him from any page I liked, and see if he could nail it.
He gave me:
– The book title and author.
– The page.
– The PARAGRAPH
Then he completed the page aloud and smiled at me. I thanked God he worked for our military. Going up against this guy in basically anything that required intelligence would be like the average person playing defense against an NFL offensive line (Not the Commanders, though, that’d be a bad example). He once told me that speaking to other people was exhausting because, regardless of the conversation’s duration, he always knew within the first few seconds how it would play out. The intervening words being exchanged were a waste of time. It dawned on me years later that that was his way of signaling that he didn’t like me.
Image source: DasturdlyBastard, Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#20
I went on a golf trip with a friend of a friend a couple of years ago. He mentioned casually that he was pretty good at remembering numbers. Gave him my credit card at dinner to test his ability and he took one look, gave my card back, and recited the number back to me perfectly including expiration date and security code. I thought that was pretty cool, but not overly impressive.
He turns up two years later at that same golf trip, and just for fun I ask if he remembers my credit card number. Without hesitation, he closed his eyes, thought for a second, and recited it perfectly except he flipped two of the security code numbers. Needless to say I’m trying to maintain a good relationship with this guy…
Image source: elevenhead
#21
I know a guy who’d go upto women in clubs and say “Tell me your name and I’ll tell you your postcode” (He was a postman”.
Image source: Sid8800
#22
I was 19, tutoring a little boy after school in my town. Super quiet, always watching. One day I joked, “You’re scary smart,” and he replied, completely calm, “You touch your necklace when you’re lying.”
I froze. I’d never noticed that. Then he added, “You won’t be here long anyway.”
Two weeks later I moved away for uni.
Still don’t know how he knew.
Image source: SweetCaseyBabe
#23
This wasn’t a personal witness but was a known result of something that happened in Colorado back in the 90s. A cross country runner from a high school in one of the small towns up in the foothills past Denver went missing. He did a standard loop around the town to train and it included some of the foothills trails. It turned out he was ended by a mountain lion and it was a full grown, fully healthy tom that they found guarding the body. They obviously euthanized it, but after investigating the lion tracks they were able to see that it literally followed him on his loops (he’d typically do 4-5) and waited until he’d done a couple so he was winded.
It went against everything the state and wildlife/game departments had claimed for years. Now we can acknowledge it’s extremely heavy mountain lion country and at the time, there was an ongoing study to prove how high their population was towards parks and wildlife for the state. The official PR stance had been “they’re elusive, they’re afraid of people and your pets, only an old, sick or injured one would attack a human, and they stick to the deep mountains”. When a fully healthy cat ended a 6ft, in shape 16 year old it really changed how people were perceiving the whole situation.
The non-fiction book, *The Beast In The Garden*, goes into the study of how they proved the actual huge cat population by a few CU professors. Nowadays there’s been hundreds of sightings on people’s ring cameras, and I myself had to stay cautious and aware when a few neighbors were posting video of them sauntering down driveways, napping in trees in their yards or along bike paths, and hanging out under people’s decks. Especially when it would be dark in a parking lot that opened up to a tall grass open space where they were known to hang out. When you hear a recording of their unique chirping, it’s a little chilling to realize how many times you’ve heard it if you spend time outdoors here.
Image source: ptoftheprblm
#24
My son at the age of 4-6 could add letters. He was horrible with English, he’s got severe ADHD. Well, he comes in the living room and says, “dad? Guess what H+P is?” I said Hewitt Packard? No, he can add the numeric values of the letters A-Z and a-z. 1-52 uppercase for 1-26 and lowercase 27-52. He still adds words up and gets distracted reading. He reads numbers as words and words as numbers. It’s strange, but really cool to see.
Image source: karmah616
#25
Not really creepy, but a guy I went to undergrad and med school with went through an entire semester of upper level organic chemistry and missed maybe two answers. We had weekly 10 question quizzes where 6/10 was great. Tests would be curved where 70 or so was a A. There he was every time, one person in the class got 100. Every week 10/10. He didn’t seem to study much and he liked his weed. Had highest score in our class on Step 1 and Step 2. Just effortless.
Image source: ovid31
#26
Gene Simmons picked my accent as not only Australian, but Melbournian specifically when I’d only said about three words to him. Australians can’t even do that.
Image source: boobturtle
#27
When I was a teen, was babysitting for special needs group of my church.
Kid was drawing what seemed like random lines on a piece of paper with random numbers attached at each line. And a random red dot/circle in the middle.
She gave it to me at the end of church. Thought it was cute. Had no idea what it was.
A few weeks later I realized it was a map of the surrounding area with all the street and ave numbers.
She was 5.
Image source: scikit-learns
#28
Dark triad people are interesting, and they seem to like me. If you notice one and talk to them about it in a friendly and non judgmental way, it’s amazing what they’ll tell you and the casualness in how they’ll describe it.
I remember one of them telling me how she would notice almost immediately the little things that would make someone respond positively and negatively. Then she could pick up the patterns that people followed in their interactions with others, and how she could very systematically pepper those positive and negative triggers in to gain trust, attention, sympathy, etc. and how she could sow disfavor on others if it suited her.
What’s doubly weird is that these people will still try to use these tactics on you even after they’ve explained them. Doubly entertaining that they could be sobbing or screaming or happy one moment in feigned emotion, and if you call them out in private, a switch will flip when they realize you’re not falling for it.
Image source: deftlydexterous
#29
I’ve mentioned this on another post but – Autism.
I believe neuroscience is just scratching the surface of what this ‘condition’ actually is.
My personal experience is my own nephew. Written off through secondary school for being socially reclusive and diagnosed autism, wasn’t expected to achieve much for his GCSE’s. Something switched in year 10 going into year 11 and he aced his core GCSE subjects A* across the board. Got into a good college to study Applied Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology – again 4 A*. Headhunted by a very prestigious university to study Advanced mathematics, 2 yrs into that they had him teaching robotics and mathematics at the same uni. His condition has deteriorated over the past 24 months where he finds it very difficult to physically speak. Completed his degree 1st class with distinction and is now one of a very limited set of people doing r&d into advanced algorithms/robotics/Ai.
Oh yeah, he also built and programmed a robotic ‘friend’ at uni that learned how to do basic tasks similar to what Boston Dynamics is doing. This kid scares the life out of me with his intelligence but I feel desperately sad that he is losing his ability to speak.
Quick story. We were at a family wedding where another distant relative was also in attendance who seemed to have a similar condition to my nephew. They instantly connected and started an absolutely mind blowing conversation. It was like watching 2 computers going up against each other. They were literally talking over each other whilst digesting what the other was saying and responding at the same time. It was a conversation about statistics and probability and I noped out after about 60 seconds and just sat there completely in awe of these two brains. (BTW, other relative is working with .gov.uk 😬)
Edit:WOW!! I was just throwing thoughts at the screen, didn’t expect this much interaction. From the bottom of my heart thank you all for the kind messages of encouragement and advice for my nephew. I will be certain to pass them on and somehow explain that it came from thoughtful strangers on the internet from around the world.
Image source: no_com_ment
#30
My sister was getting perfect grades through elementary school. All 100s and A+. I kept telling her next year will be harder. Nope all the way through high-school literally perfect. Valedictorian senior year and 2330 out of 2400 on SATs. Accepted to all Ivy league schools and chose Princeton.
Guess I was wrong.
Image source: VictorVonD278
#31
A historian i know was scheduled to do a 80-minute talk about the Gulf war in the 90s at a University. He had done many of them before, but still had to have his notes in front of him during the talk, because it is just impossible to remember 100% of the information in that moment, and also mention it when it makes sense. Or so he believed. When he shows up, he sees posters about an upcoming talk by Political activist/Linguist Noam Chomsky. And it has the Gulf War on the poster. He decides to check this one out after his own talk. And it turns out that the university had made a blunder. Chomsky was booked for a Q&A. However a lot of the audience expected Gulf war talk. So Chomsky says: I can give you the textbook version before I add some personal remarks. He then goes on to give an identical speech in front of the historian, while he is checking his own notes to double-check if Chomsky is forgetting anything, but no. Totally unprepared to speak on this. No notes in front of him.
Image source: tjomski79
#32
My doberman, DeSoto, rest his soul. Was probably the smartest dog I’ve ever seen. Probably doesn’t seem like much but it was a truly incredible site that I didn’t think dogs did.
I was waking up on the couch of my in laws right before the sun was up and just laid there in the silence. My boy DeSoto didn’t know anyone was awake at the time so he slowly gets up, walks over to one of the windows, props two feet up onto the window seal and watches the sunrise. He didn’t move. He didn’t make a sound. He just stood there watching the sunrise.
Without a doubt one of the most profound moments of my life. I could really see the intelligence in this creature.
Image source: _Green_Redbull_
#33
My son, frustrated nearly all of his teachers & his martial arts instructor. One teacher said he had a photographic memory, did no homework for 5 years (he didn’t even mind going to detention every day & hung out with the teachers) no revision, and walked away with top grades in everything.
During martial arts classes he would do the bare minimum, instructor used to get really annoyed & tell him he’d fail his next grading but lo & behold, every grading passed perfectly !!!
Has qualifications in all sorts of coding & is practically a maths genius. Never loses at any logic game he plays, even first time playing.
He scares me sometimes with how intelligent he is !!
Image source: thecatisincharge
#34
My son has creeped me out a few times:
– Used to complete all his puzzles face down without using the pictures, just the shapes.
– Solves his Rubik’s cube….wtih his feet.
– Helps put any ikea furniture or boxed furniture together by flipping through the instructions one time quickly and never referencing them again.
– Memorize lists and huge passages of books.
Just when you get excited that you’re living with a genius you see him come in from school and notice his shirt is inside out and backwards. HOW DID YOU NOT ADDRESS THIS AT SOME POINT DURING THE DAY!
Image source: NEdad71
#35
My cat appears to understand tools at a glance. She can open any door in the house by jumping and catching the knob, apparently learnt by watching us. She’ll often inspect the door for locks before trying.
Then she realized she could apply this to the fridge (uses her paws and head to pull from the side until it opens). Then she realized it wasn’t worth the effort because we reorganized it in a way she can’t easily reach the good stuff. Immediately stopped doing it.
So in short she apparently can reason to some extent if the effort is worth it, learn from watching, and apply the knowledge to other areas. Luckily she lacks opposite thumbs.
Image source: Accurate_Western_346
#36
Most intelligent person I’ve ever known was actually a huge ignorant. He had terrifying brainpower, but he had a caveman general knowledge and personality-wise he was absolutely the most average young adult jerk you can possibly imagine, one of those that can only speak about intercourse and football regardless of who they have in front.
He single-handedly made half my university course graduate. He would start studying two weeks before the exam. One week before he knew the whole program *by the word* and he would just act as a professor to a bunch of us. His final average grade was the highest possible grade. As in he scored maximum grades at every single exam he did. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: I’ve been with him for the whole process multiple times and unless he’s also the best actor in the world he genuinely did this in a week.
After the university he went on to rake a load of money in various marketing agencies, to then quit everything and put up a pizza place. He’s now the owner of a pizza place. Knowing him he probably acts as the whole management and keeps track of everything that isn’t cooking and serving.
Image source: ModeratelyGrumpy
#37
My three year old reciting the alphabet backwards just a few days after finally figuring it out for the first time the whole way through in the normal direction. Terrifying.
Image source: murgatroid1
#38
Someone predicting exactly what I was about to say, word for word. I still think about it.
Image source: evelynspices
#39
Girl I worked with knew the lyrics of any song I played. Even obscure random songs. She knew them word for word. Different genres and everything.
Image source: Different-Ranger-378
#40
Nothing I’ve ever done, that’s for sure.
Image source: DoppelFrog
#41
Not terribly creepy, but I don’t have a lot of opportunities to talk about this. My old roommate and I were once doing something in the kitchen and one of us dropped something, which then rolled a bit under the oven. Her cat happened to be in the kitchen with us. We said “olive, go get it!” And pointed to the spot under the oven. Olive looked at the spot for about three seconds, then proceeded to walk up and swipe her paw under the oven. My roommate and I immediately looked at each other like , did that actually just happen? Both our jaws were on the floor. Olive did not succeed in retrieving the item but I still can’t believe she did that.
Image source: kitkatbatman
#42
Well when I was back in college ,a random guy texted me on Instagram and since my account was private I did not see the other inbox where these texts go in ,after almost a week I noticed someone had texted. He did not look familiar soo I asked if I knew him from somewhere , he said no but “I know you” and then he told me that he saw me around my college campus got my vehicles number and put that in the road tickets website and got my name and then looked it up on Instagram and sent me a text because he thought I was cute !
It was creepy but at the same time I was amazed that this was even possible.
Image source: Idk_-2003
#43
A pet parrot, specifically a blue & gold Macaw. My then girlfriend and I fostered him, he lived with us for about a year. There were three days over the xmas holidays when we would both be out of town. One of my friends from university agreed to take care of him. He was late coming over the first day so he gave the bird some treats, putting them in a small stainless steel dish on top of the cage. He climbs up, grabs the dish and throws all the treats on the floor. My buddy gets down on his hands and knees to pick them up and the bird throws the dish, which hits him on the head. He says “ow!” and the bird laughed.
Image source: Stock_Garage_672
#44
We once had a waitress who took all the orders for a table of ten without writing them down! This was before the technology that would have aided her. You could see in her eyes that she was somehow memorizing them. Cataloging them. She got them all correct.
Image source: lynnburko
#45
Watched someone in Vegas win hand after hand of poker. Stopped after maybe 20k in winning and said “I’m bored.” This was someone I knew well who was a math genius. I asked why he didn’t gamble all the time.
He said “it doesn’t interest me. I could win all day every day.”
Please note he worked in finance and made crazy money. Just interesting to watch someone not want to win every nickel they could.
Image source: LoyalLoss18
#46
I worked with a guy who could look at a complex corner where sheets of drywall intersected, then cut a 3D piece of plastic moulding (without measuring/drawing anything) that would slide onto each piece, perfectly covering each corner.
Maybe it was a practiced skill, but he generally struck me as highly intelligent with off-the-charts spatial reasoning skills, which I feel like are underappreciated on the spectrum of human cognitive abilities.
Image source: drgreenhead
#47
Was doing a general quiz with a few friends. One of whom answered the most random question and he was the only person to answer in a room of ~100 individuals. Keep in mind these are individuals who go to weekly quiz’s to show off their knowledge and take it extremely seriously. When we asked him how did he know the answer he then proceeds to tell us he read it in a book while taking a sh*t and one of our friends houses when he was 15 (~5 years prior to this night). We all immediately realize he has photographic memory and is super smart. Still good friends with him today but this night changed my perception of him entirely.
Image source: notathrowaway870
#48
Grew up in a house with a female cat that had been around since my siblings and I were little. She would use combinations of trills and meows to make cat approximations of our names that were close enough that we knew when she was calling a specific sibling.
If we didn’t respond or start coming downstairs when my mother would call us from downstairs the cat would post up at the bottom of the stairs trill-meowing the person’s name or come into their room and do it in their face until they followed.
Seemed perfectly normal to us but I had friends that were definitely creeped out by my cat “saying” my name.
Image source: SplintPunchbeef
#49
Not really creepy, just unnerving and sobering – also, not intelligence per se, rather experience and knowledge:
A few years ago, my family and I were watching Wall-E with a family friend who used to be a UK Royal Marine. He was (and remains) a very gentle, easy going fella in his civilian life. We were watching it with our kids and we all laughed when Eve first used her blasters (or whatever) as it seemed overpowered.
My friend then said ***“Well, she’s doing risky reconnaissance – I’m not surprised she’s heavily armed”***.
Some sobering real world experience there.
Image source: yearsofpractice
#50
I do work a lot with IBM servers (that run AIX as OS).
We followed courses about that AIX to enhance our knowledge about it.
During one of those courses, we had an instructor **who could read hexadecimal code** off the top of his head as if it were a natural language.
For those of you who do not know what hexadecimal code is, it is a language format for software executables (like Word or Excel) produced by compilers. **It is machine code not meant to be read by humans** but intended for the (AIX or Windows OS for example) and/or the computer it runs on.
We all had a jaw-dropping moment, and then he told us that it was nothing compared to what a colleague of his at IBM was capable of.
The person he referred to was responsible for **writing the very first machine code** to bootstrap the AIX OS on brand new hardware that had never run code before.
He did that for each new type of machine/hardware within a couple of hours!
Truly rocket science to write code for a machine that no one had ever written code for before.
Image source: PopPrestigious8115
#51
My wife has a photographic memory. Many years ago when we were dating, we were traveling with my parents and a few hours later while we were all staying at a hotel. My dad casually remarked that he wished he could remember the phone number on a pizza truck that had driven by us in traffic earlier because it would be nice to order a pizza. My wife instantly remembered the number and he called and got us a pizza.
She said that when she was younger and took tests at school, she would just visualize the book in her mind and read it to find the answers.
Unfortunately, I’m the complete opposite. I have two wallet finders in my wallet in case one dies) and a tether with a clip that I attached to my pants because, as my second grade teacher said “if his head wasn’t attached he he’d forget it.“ Oddly, I’m not stupid and ranked second in the nation as far as a test regarding creativity. It just shows me that we all have different types and styles of intelligence. Mine clearly is not a photographic memory.
Image source: Disastrous-Fig-9830
#52
My college roommate could read people like it was a superpower. We’d be at a party and she’d lean over and say something like “that couple by the door is about to break up, probably tonight” or “the guy in the red shirt is lying about where he works.”
I used to think she was just being dramatic until I started keeping track. She was right like 90% of the time. Once she told me my boyfriend was about to ghost me three days before it happened. I asked her how she knew and she just shrugged and said “his laugh changed.”
Still not sure if I should have been impressed or terrified.
Image source: SeleneGardenAI
#53
One of my friends just remembers everything we’ve talked about and he says it’s normal with most people he knows. At first I thought he was just in love with me and obsessing but he can just do it with everyone.
Like I’ll tell him something and he’ll say he’s knows and then tells me the exact day and place we were when I told him, what else we were talking about and how it came up. (This is things from like 4 years ago). It’s kinda nuts, like he has to pretend to not know things about people because people get weirded out.
But ever since I told him to not do that with me it’s really great! Like I can talk to him about a friend I haven’t mentioned in a year and he’ll just know everything about them, it’s like he just has the encyclopaedic knowledge of everything anyone’s ever told him.
Image source: MaintenanceBest8397
#54
We used to keep my ferret in the office with a baby gate and a box blocking the exit. One time she dragged an empty cat litter container and, through trial and error and readjusting the angles, eventually used it as a launch pad to get onto the box and past the baby gate. It showed a level of critical thinking and problems solving that I didn’t think animals had. She was incredibly smart. We used to think ferrets in general were smart but then we got another one who is definitely not very smart so it was unique to Ori. .
Image source: angrygse
#55
A former manager of mine. In the course of one presentation, spoke 8 different languages fluently. Answered questions from visitors who spoke those 8 languages and the presentation was on silicon wafer development and etching for computer chips. For “fun” she was getting her doctorate in mathematics. In a company full of smart people, she was a rockstar.
Image source: ValuableMoment2
#56
I had a classmate who was an incredible artist. She would draw with a ballpoint pen all over her notes and produce these astonishing scenes. Her drawings were gritty, nightmarish and incredibly realistic. I never understood how she could draw with such perfect shading and proportions just from her imagination.
One day she was working on a gnarly drawing of a small mouse standing in a thin pool of blood nibbling at the corner of a severed human ear. I asked her ‘how do you get these drawings so perfect when you don’t have a reference?”
“I do have a reference,” she said and pointed to an empty spot on her desk. “He’s sitting right there.” She focused back in on that empty spot and kept drawing.
I don’t know if that’s intelligence or what, but it was definitely unsettling.
Image source: tj_holloran
#57
My son, who is autistic, can tell you what day of the week a date was. January 10, 1789? yep…any date, any year. He can also travel down a street one time and tell you all the names of the businesses in order on that street. AND-he can tell us what we were doing and what we ate on days as well. In conversation “Didn’t we eat a pizza at the mall in this city last year in February?” yes, we at xyz pizza at xyz pizza place on February 15, 2025. Their health rating was 93.
Image source: Heavy_Front_3712
#58
I’m pretty sure the local crows all have a specific bird word for people. They make the same noise whenever they see a person, and its different from the noises they make when seagulls of hawks turn up.
Image source: and_so_forth
Follow Us
