There's no doubt that man is the smartest. But do you know what other animals are smart, too?

Dolphins

    Dolphins are very smart. Most of the “tricks” they're taught to do are actually behavior they would engage in on their own. They love to play, race and generally enjoy their life to the fullest. They speak a language we have yet to completely understand and like all civilized creatures, dolphins' mothers always provide their young children with guidance and possibly, love.

Great apes

    The great ape family primarily consists of gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans. Their brain chemistry is so similar to humans' that NASA once used chimpanzees in place of astronauts during many dangerous missions. Gorillas have been taught sign language and orangutans exist in complex familial relationships.

Elephants

    Everyone has heard the phrase “an elephant never forgets”. Elephants establish long-term friendships, recognizing and remembering their friends years later. If an elephant comes upon a fallen friend, it has even been known to feel sad.

Parrots

    As proved by this list, parrots are very smart. They are also the only animals listed that can actually hold a conversation. Some parrots know hundreds of words by imitating humans. The birds are also capable of remembering words and using them intelligently in response to situations.

    More companies and recyclers are taking steps to ensure that old electronic devices such as TVs and computers aren't sent to poor countries.

    The Basel Action Network, a Seattle-based non-profit that largely exposed the overseas discarding (丢弃) of US electronic waste, on Thursday launched a programme to use third-party employees to certify (证实) recyclers who don't export dangerous electronic waste.

    The so-called e-Steward recyclers will also agree not to discard the waste in US landfills and agree to meet other criteria. The certification is intended to provide companies and consumers with some assurance that the waste, which can include toxins (毒素) such as lead and mercury, is disposed of safely.

    The Government Accountability Office, in a 2008 report, declared that US electronic waste was often disposed of unsafely in such countries as India. There, workers recycle gold, silver and copper from the waste, often in open-air acid baths.

    The Basel Network also says it won assurances from 13 organizations, including Samsung, Bank of America, Wells Far-go, that they'll use e-Steward recyclers whenever possible. Wells Fargo had already been using recyclers who declared not to export. So far, Basel has certified three recyclers and seven sites.

    Before e-stewards, even, companies that wanted to avoid export of electronic waste had to “hope for the best”, when, they handed their waste to recyclers, says Robert Houghton, president of Ohio-based recycler Redemtech. It is an e-Steward that counts major companies among its customers. “Now, they can get some proof,” Houghton says.

    Basel's standards compete with another set launched in January. It was made by industry and backed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

    That standard, called R-2, doesn't ban the export of dangerous electronic waste but requires that it be handled safely. Instead of a ban, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries says, efforts should be made to help poor countries develop safe recycling.

    Forests are always losers at the Olympics, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon.

    For the winter games in PyeongChang, South Korea, virgin forest was destroyed on Mount Gariwang to accommodate ski runs. For the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, a ski run is set to wipe out part of the Songshan National Nature Reserve And let's not forget the 240 acres of Atlantic Forest that were leveled for the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro to make way for a golf course.

    For the upcoming Tokyo games, environmental and human rights advocates have been raising alarms about the use of tropical wood to build the New National Stadium. Activists have fought against such environmental destruction. The damage is often permanent, threatens endangered plants and animals and, in some cases, causes conflicts with native people But frequently the country's organizing committee, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have found ways to make it reasonable—despite a paragraph in the Olympic Charter that states that the IOC's role is to "encourage and support a responsible concern for environmental issues."

    As it stands now. the IOC has little authority over a city's local organizing committee, which finally plans the event, Chappelet, professor of public management at the University of Lausanne, told Earther. "Even if the IOC is dissatisfied with the way host cities have prepared for the games, they have no built-in systems to supervise (监督) them so that they strictly follow the Olympic Charter. The only thing they can do if they're not happy is to withdraw the right to organize the game. But the IOC could include more enforcement (执行) systems into the contract (合同) they make with the host city, he added. That contract must be signed and obeyed by everyone. Those who break it could be fined.

    Boykoff, the author of several books on the Olympics, suggested a similar solution. "The IOC could insist that host cities prioritize their ecological promises, but instead they look the other way, time and time again," he said.

    Dr Dian Fossey, one of the world's leading women scientists, had a remarkable career. The work she devoted her life to protecting and studying the mountain gorillas (大猩猩) of Africa—has proved highly effective and has resulted in the steady (平稳的) increase of this most endangered great apes.

    Fossey made her first trip to Africa in 1963. Three years later, she returned to Africa to begin a long term study of the mountain gorillas. She set up camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo but moved to Rwanda because of political reasons in 1967. She established her "Karisoke" Research Centre camp on September 24, 1967.

    Fossey's aims were to study gorilla ecology (生态学) and social organization. She found that in order to achieve this, she needed to recognize individual gorillas, which required that the gorillas get used to her presence (出现). By copying gorillas' behaviour and sounds, Fossey began to gain their trust, and in 1970 an adult male gorilla she had named "Peanuts" reached out to touch her hand.

    Close observations over thousands of hours enabled Fossey to gain the gorillas' trust and bring forth new knowledge about their behaviour. Stories and photographs of her work were published in National Geographic Magazine and elsewhere.

    In 1977, one of Fossey's favorite gorillas, Digit, was killed by poachers and she established the Digit Fund to help raise money for gorilla protection efforts in the same year.

    On December 26, 1985, Fossey was murdered while going back to her house in Karisoke. Her body was discovered near the research centre. Most probably? Dian Fossey had been killed by the poachers she'd fought against. On her tombstone (墓碑): "No one loved gorillas more..."

    In 1988, the life and the work of Fossey were made into a movie based on her book.

    One family, which moved from Japan and settled at the turn of the century near San Francisco, had built a business in which they grew roses and trucked them into San Francisco three mornings a week.

    The other family also marketed roses. For almost four decades the two families were neighbors, and the sons took over the farms, but then on December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Although the rest of the family members were American, the father of the Japanese family had never been naturalized. As they planned to leave the country, his neighbor made it clear that, if necessary, he would look after his friend's nursery (花圃). It was something each family had learned in church-Love the neighbor as themselves. "You would do the same for us," he told his Japanese friend.

    It was not long before the Japanese family was transported to a poor landscape in Canada. A full year went by. Then two. Then three. While the Japanese neighbors were in Canada, their friends worked in the greenhouses. Sometimes the father's work could stretch to 16 and 17 hours. And then one day, when the war in Europe had ended, the Japanese family packed up and boarded a train. They were going home.

    What would they find? The family was met at the train station by their neighbors, and when they got to their home, the whole Japanese family were shocked. There was the nursery, complete, clean and shining in the sunlight, neat, prosperous and healthy. And the house was just as clean and welcoming as the nursery. And there on the dining room ground was one perfect red (玫瑰花蕾), just waiting to unfold-the gift of one neighbor to another.

Rolland and Adeline are proud parents to nine beautiful children. Their youngest two, daughter Lanto, and son, Rindra, were both born with cleft lip（唇裂） conditions. In Madagascar, many families have never seen a cleft lip before, so it's a condition often greeted with fear and misfortune in some rural communities.

However, the news of Lanto and Rindra's cleft lip wasn't much of a shock for Rolland and Adeline because Rolland's cousin—a man in his fifties—had lived his entire adult life with an untreated cleft lip. Although seeing a relative with a cleft lip meant the family weren't fearful of the condition, they knew the negative impact an untreated cleft lip can have on a person's health and life. As any loving parents would, Rolland and Adeline wanted a better future for their children.

Rolland heard an advertisement on the radio about an Operation Smile surgical programme in Antsirabe, Madagascar. Finding out that Rindra and Lanto could have the cleft lip surgery they needed, for free, was a dream for the family. Unlike here in the UK, health services aren't free in many parts of the world, and the costs of treatment—or even travelling to reach medical facilities—are out of reach for most families.

When Rolland and his children arrived at the patient village, they were surprised to see so many other families in the same position. After a thorough medical evaluation by medical volunteers, Lanto was found to be fit enough for surgery, and later got the new smile her parents had dreamed of for her. But, for younger brother Rindra, the journey to a new smile would take a little longer.

Operation Smile has provided hundreds of thousands of safe surgeries for children withc left lip conditions worldwide. For more information about our work or to find out how you can help, visitwww.operationsmile.org .