Making a Maze to Show How a Creature Thinks

"We don't understand them," [Wendy Alexa] continued. "Try to make a maze that will show how this creature thinks. We don't even understand them enough to test them. Maybe mazes aren't the way to study them. Science can only say so much. I know they watched me. They followed me. But proving that intelligence is so difficult. There's nothing so peculiar as an octopus." 
Quoted by Sy Montgomery in The Soul of an Octopus.

Ha, I bet you thought I was talking about horses. And in a way, I was. Some of the surprising recent research that has recently come out about equine cognitive processing (using symbols to indicate choices on blanketing, using glances to try to get people to put treat bucket in paddock with horse, figuring out how to open a box with hay by observing another horse) is the result of scientists building tests based on better understanding of how a horse thinks and communicates.