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What Does an IQ of 95 Mean?

Posted on by Mahesh
Scores & Scales

What Does an IQ of 95 Mean? Is It Average, Low or Bad?

An IQ of 95 is average: the 37th percentile on the standard scale, labelled Average on the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet charts, with Low Average ending at 89. See what mental age 95 gives, how many people score it, how it compares with 105 and what it says about work.

By , Data & Research AnalystPublished October 19, 2026 · 9 min readReviewed by Aarav Vardhan, Editor-in-Chief

Bar of the IQ bands on the Wechsler children's chart with the share of people in each: 2.3 percent below 70, 6.8 percent 70 to 79, 16.1 percent 80 to 89, 49.5 percent 90 to 109 where 95 is marked, 16.1 percent 110 to 119, 6.8 percent 120 to 129 and 2.3 percent 130 and above.

An IQ of 95 is average: on the standard scale (mean 100, standard deviation 15) it is the 37th percentile, so about 37% of people score lower and about 63% score higher. It is not low and it is not bad. The Wechsler children’s test (WISC-V) and the Stanford-Binet 5 label 95 Average (90 to 109), the Woodcock-Johnson does the same (90 to 110), and the Low Average band ends at 89. Only our own simplified chart, which splits the 85 to 115 average range at 100, calls 95 low average. This guide shows where 95 falls on the bell curve, whether it is below average, what mental age a 95 gives, how many people score it, how it compares with 105 and what it says about work and school.

  • Percentile: 37th on a standard deviation 15 scale (38th on SD 16, 42nd on SD 24; our normal-curve arithmetic).
  • Label: Average on the WISC-V and Stanford-Binet 5 (90 to 109) and the Woodcock-Johnson (90 to 110). Low Average is 80 to 89.
  • Below average? Below the mean of 100 by five points, one third of a standard deviation, which no test manual treats as low.
  • Rarity: not rare. About 1 person in 40 scores exactly 95, and in a class of 30 about 11 score 95 or lower.
  • Mental age: 9.5 years for a 10-year-old on the old ratio formula; 15 years 2 months for an adult on a divisor of 16 years. A convention, not a portrait.
  • Versus 105: ten points apart, two thirds of a standard deviation; a random 105-scorer outscores a random 95-scorer about 68% of the time.
Bar of the IQ bands on the Wechsler children's chart with the share of people in each: 2.3 percent below 70, 6.8 percent 70 to 79, 16.1 percent 80 to 89, 49.5 percent 90 to 109 where 95 is marked, 16.1 percent 110 to 119, 6.8 percent 120 to 129 and 2.3 percent 130 and above.
Bar of the IQ bands on the Wechsler children’s chart with the share of people in each: 2.3 percent below 70, 6.8 percent 70 to 79, 16.1 percent 80 to 89, 49.5 percent 90 to 109 where 95 is marked, 16.1 percent 110 to 119, 6.8 percent 120 to 129 and 2.3 percent 130 and above.

The figure shows the bands of the Wechsler children’s chart and the share of people in each, with 95 marked five points inside the Average band. Our guides to an IQ of 85, an IQ of 90, an IQ of 97 and an IQ of 100 cover the scores around it.

What percentile is an IQ of 95?

The 37th on the usual scale. A percentile is the share of the norm sample that scored at or below the number, so a 95 beats a bit more than a third of people and is beaten by a bit less than two thirds. The table places the scores around it on the same curve, and our IQ percentile calculator does the same for any score. For the whole curve, see the IQ bell curve.

Scores around 95 on the standard scale (mean 100, SD 15, our normal-curve arithmetic)
IQ score Scoring at or below Scoring higher
85 15.9% 84.1%
90 25.2% 74.8%
95 36.9% 63.1%
97 42.1% 57.9%
100 50.0% 50.0%

The printed number depends on the scale. Most modern tests use a standard deviation of 15, older Stanford-Binet editions used 16 and the Cattell scales use 24, so the same printed 95 lands at a different percentile on each: on a wider scale, five points below the mean are fewer standard deviations, and the percentile moves closer to 50. Our explainer on standard deviation 15 versus 16 walks through the arithmetic, and the IQ score converter moves a score between scales.

The same printed 95 on three scales (our normal-curve arithmetic)
Scale Percentile of a printed 95 Share scoring higher
Standard deviation 15 (Wechsler, current Stanford-Binet) 36.9% 63.1%
Standard deviation 16 (older Stanford-Binet, some school tests) 37.7% 62.3%
Standard deviation 24 (Cattell) 41.7% 58.3%

Is an IQ of 95 average, low or bad?

It is average on the charts professionals use. The table shows where 95 falls on each chart we cover and what sits on either side.

Where 95 falls on four common charts
Chart Band that contains 95 Band above it Band below it
WISC-V (Wechsler, children) 90 to 109: Average 110 to 119: High Average 80 to 89: Low Average
Stanford-Binet 5 90 to 109: Average 110 to 119: High average 80 to 89: Low average
Woodcock-Johnson 90 to 110: Average 111 to 120: High Average 80 to 89: Low Average
Our simplified IQ ranges guide 85 to 99: low average (inside the 85 to 115 average range) 100 to 115: high average 70 to 85: borderline to low average

So the label depends on the chart: Average on three, low average inside the average range on our simplified one. Neither means a problem. “Below average” in the plain sense, below 100, describes half of all people, and “bad” and “dumb” are not terms any test manual uses. The range that professionals treat as a concern starts much lower: the Low Average band covers 80 to 89 on the Wechsler charts, and the borderline range sits below 85 (see an IQ of 85 and an IQ of 80). The band tables are in our guides to WISC-V scores, the Stanford-Binet and the Woodcock-Johnson, and the simplified ranges are in IQ ranges and IQ classifications.

What is the mental age of an IQ of 95?

On the old ratio formula, mental age is the IQ divided by 100 times the real age, so a child with a ratio IQ of 95 scores 95% of their real age: 9.5 years at age 10. Adults need a ceiling, because real age keeps rising while mental age stops. With the usual divisor of 16 years, the same arithmetic gives 15 years 2 months, in line with the chart in our guide to IQ and mental age.

Mental age implied by a ratio IQ of 95 (old formula; the adult divisor is capped at 16 years)
Person Mental age In years and months
8-year-old 7.6 years 7 years 7 months
10-year-old 9.5 years 9 years 6 months
12-year-old 11.4 years 11 years 5 months
15-year-old 14.25 years 14 years 3 months
Adult (divisor capped at 16 years) 15.2 years 15 years 2 months

Three cautions. The ratio method is obsolete: modern tests report a deviation IQ, a rank among people of the same age (see deviation IQ versus ratio IQ). The adult cap is a convention, and a different ceiling gives a different figure. And a mental age says nothing about an adult’s skills or judgment: a 95 does not mean thinking like a 15-year-old. Claims that an animal “has the mind of a three-year-old” borrow the same arithmetic, yet no test produced such a number; our guide to horse IQ shows what researchers measure instead.

How many people have an IQ of 95?

A lot. About 2.5% of people, or 1 in 40, score exactly 95 if you round to whole numbers. The table breaks the curve into five-point bands: the band that holds 95 contains 13.1% of people, as many as the band that holds 100. In a class of 30 pupils, roughly 11 would score 95 or lower and 19 would score higher.

Share of people in each five-point band (SD 15, our normal-curve arithmetic)
IQ band Share of people
80 to 84 6.7%
85 to 89 9.4%
90 to 94 11.7%
95 to 99 13.1%
100 to 104 13.1%
105 to 109 11.7%
110 to 114 9.4%

So a 95 is typical in the plain sense: it sits in the fattest part of the curve, where each five-point band holds more than a tenth of the population.

Your own number

Where would your own score land?

Take the IIF-certified assessment and get your score with the scale it was measured on, the percentile it corresponds to and the confidence range around it — the three figures most online tests leave out.

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How different are an IQ of 95 and an IQ of 105?

Less than the ten-point gap suggests. Ten points is two thirds of a standard deviation. If two groups had average scores of 95 and 105 with the same spread of 15, a person picked at random from the 105 group would outscore a person picked at random from the 95 group about 68% of the time, and the 95 person would come out ahead about 32% of the time. The two distributions overlap by about 74%. That is a difference between averages, and individuals cross it constantly. Our guide to an IQ of 105 covers the mirror-image score, and the IQ score converter compares any two.

Can a person with an IQ of 95 do skilled work or finish college?

Yes, and the data show it. In the 1945 table of Army General Classification Test scores by civilian occupation, the best-known source of “IQ by profession” charts, the accountants, the highest-scoring group at 128.1, ranged from 94 to 157. The AGCT used a standard deviation of 20, so the lowest accountant sits at z = -0.3, which is about 95.5 on a standard deviation 15 scale (our arithmetic). Laborers, with a mean of 95.8, ranged up to 145, which is about 134 on the same conversion. Our guide to average IQ by occupation gives the table and its limits: 18,782 white male Army Air Force enlisted men, 80 years old.

What holds up is a group-level pattern: general mental ability correlates about .65 with the occupational level people reach (Schmidt and Hunter, 2004) and about .56 with education (Strenze, 2007). Those are correlations across thousands of people, with the exceptions on both sides that a correlation below 1 always leaves. A 95 is a poor guide to any one career. For school, see does IQ predict school success and average IQ by education level.

Does an IQ of 95 hold up on a retest or on old norms?

Roughly. The expected second score of a 95 is 100 minus the correlation between the tests times five: 95.2 at a correlation of .96 and 96.2 at .76, the stability of adult rank order across five years (Breit and colleagues, 2024). The standard error of a full-scale score is about 2 to 3 points, so a reported 95 is best read as roughly 90 to 100. Retesting adds about four points through practice (Hausknecht and colleagues, 2007). The age of the norms matters too: raw scores rose about 0.28 points a year in a meta-analysis of 271 samples from 1909 to 2013, with slower gains lately (Pietschnig and Voracek, 2015).

Illustration: a 95 on old norms, if the old 0.28-point rate held (not a measured conversion)
Age of the norms Drift (points) 95 on fresh norms
5 years 1.4 93.6
10 years 2.8 92.2
15 years 4.2 90.8
20 years 5.6 89.4

Read the table with care: it is arithmetic, not a conversion, and publishers re-norm their tests to avoid it. It shows why a 95 from a decades-old test is not the same claim as a 95 from a new one; see why IQ norms expire and regression to the mean.

Quick answers about an IQ of 95

  • Is 95 IQ good? It is average: the 37th percentile and the Average band on the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet charts.
  • Is 95 IQ below average? Below the mean of 100 by five points, but inside the Average band.
  • Is 95 IQ bad or low? No. Low Average is 80 to 89 on the Wechsler charts.
  • What percentile is an IQ of 95? The 37th on a standard deviation 15 scale, the 38th on SD 16 and the 42nd on SD 24.
  • What is the mental age of an IQ of 95? 9.5 years for a 10-year-old on the old ratio formula, and 15 years 2 months for an adult with a divisor of 16 years.
  • How rare is an IQ of 95? Not rare: about 1 person in 40 scores exactly 95.
  • Is 95 IQ enough for a skilled job? Jobs do not set IQ cut-offs, and the 1945 data shows the lowest accountant at about 95 on today’s scale.

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Bell curve of IQ scores with mean 100 and standard deviation 15, shaded up to 105: about 63 percent of people score below 105 and about 37 percent score above it, so 105 sits at the 63rd percentile, five points above the average of 100.Scores & Scales

What Does an IQ of 105 Mean?

An IQ of 105 is slightly above average: the 63rd percentile on the standard scale, labelled Average on the major test charts, with High Average starting at 110. See how accurate a 105 is, what practice and old norms do to it, and what it says about jobs and college.

9 min read

Two confidence intervals drawn on an IQ scale, one for a measured 97 and one for a measured 100, overlapping across almost their whole width to show that the two scores have not been told apartScores & Scales

Is 97 IQ Dumb?

A score of 97 is average. It sits three points below the population mean, which is well inside the margin of error of any test that produced it, so 97 and 100 are the same result in every way that can be measured. The interesting question is not what 97 says about you, but how little any single number can say.

6 min read

Bell curve of IQ scores with mean 100 and standard deviation 15, split at 90 and 110: 25 percent of people score 90 or lower, 50 percent score between 90 and 110 and 25 percent score 110 or higher.Scores & Scales

What Does an IQ of 90 Mean?

An IQ of 90 is the 25th percentile on the standard scale: about 1 person in 4 scores 90 or lower. Major test charts call it the bottom of the Average band, while simpler charts call it low average. See what 90 means, how accurate it is and what it predicts.

7 min read

Tagged 95 iq, 95 iq meaning, 95 iq percentile, average IQ, iq bell curve, iq of 95, iq of 95 mental age, iq percentile, IQ Scores, is 95 iq average, is 95 iq bad, is 95 iq good, low average iq, mental age, standard deviation 15

What Does an IQ of 105 Mean?

Posted on by Mahesh
Scores & Scales

What Does an IQ of 105 Mean? Is It Good, Above Average or High?

An IQ of 105 is slightly above average: the 63rd percentile on the standard scale, labelled Average on the major test charts, with High Average starting at 110. See how accurate a 105 is, what practice and old norms do to it, and what it says about jobs and college.

By , Data & Research AnalystPublished October 19, 2026 · 9 min readReviewed by Aarav Vardhan, Editor-in-Chief

Bell curve of IQ scores with mean 100 and standard deviation 15, shaded up to 105: about 63 percent of people score below 105 and about 37 percent score above it, so 105 sits at the 63rd percentile, five points above the average of 100.

An IQ of 105 is slightly above average: on the standard scale (mean 100, standard deviation 15) it is the 63rd percentile, so about 63% of people score lower and about 37% score higher. It sits inside the Average band on the main test charts, five points short of High Average, which starts at 110. A 105 is one third of a standard deviation above the mean, a smaller gap than the measurement error of a single test. This guide shows where 105 falls on the bell curve, whether it is good, how accurate a reported 105 is, what practice and old norms do to it, and what it does and does not say about jobs, college and age.

  • Percentile: 63rd on a standard deviation 15 scale (62nd on SD 16, 58th on SD 24; our normal-curve arithmetic).
  • Label: Average on the WISC-V and Stanford-Binet 5 (90 to 109) and on the Woodcock-Johnson (90 to 110). High Average starts at 110.
  • Distance from average: five points, one third of a standard deviation.
  • Accuracy: read a reported 105 as roughly 100 to 110.
  • Old norms: at the Flynn-effect rate of 0.28 points a year, five points is about 18 years of drift (Pietschnig and Voracek, 2015).
  • Jobs: no job has an IQ requirement. The 1945 occupation data on our site shows wide overlap between jobs.
Bell curve of IQ scores with mean 100 and standard deviation 15, shaded up to 105: about 63 percent of people score below 105 and about 37 percent score above it, so 105 sits at the 63rd percentile, five points above the average of 100.
Bell curve of IQ scores with mean 100 and standard deviation 15, shaded up to 105: about 63 percent of people score below 105 and about 37 percent score above it, so 105 sits at the 63rd percentile, five points above the average of 100.

The figure shades the 63% of people who score below 105; 37% score higher. Our guides to an IQ of 100, an IQ of 97, an IQ of 110 and an IQ of 115 cover the scores around it, and an IQ of 95 is the mirror image on the low side.

What percentile is an IQ of 105?

The 63rd on the usual scale. The table places the scores around it on the same curve, and our IQ percentile calculator does the same for any score. For the whole curve, see the IQ bell curve. A percentile is a position within a norm sample of people, which is also why animals have no IQ score; our guide to horse IQ shows what researchers measure instead.

Scores around 105 on the standard scale (mean 100, SD 15, our normal-curve arithmetic)
IQ score Scoring at or below Scoring higher Rarity of scoring higher
100 50.0% 50.0% 1 in 2.0
102 55.3% 44.7% 1 in 2.2
105 63.1% 36.9% 1 in 2.7
108 70.3% 29.7% 1 in 3.4
110 74.8% 25.2% 1 in 4.0
115 84.1% 15.9% 1 in 6.3

The printed number depends on the scale. Most modern tests use a standard deviation of 15, older Stanford-Binet editions used 16 and the Cattell scales use 24, so the same printed 105 lands at a different percentile on each. The spread is the reason: on a wider scale, five points are fewer standard deviations. Our explainer on standard deviation 15 versus 16 walks through the arithmetic, and the IQ score converter moves a score between scales.

The same printed 105 on three scales (our normal-curve arithmetic)
Scale Percentile of a printed 105 Share scoring higher
Standard deviation 15 (Wechsler, current Stanford-Binet) 63.1% 36.9%
Standard deviation 16 (older Stanford-Binet, some school tests) 62.3% 37.7%
Standard deviation 24 (Cattell) 58.3% 41.7%

Is an IQ of 105 good, above average or high?

It is above the mean by five points and average by label. The table shows where 105 falls on the charts we cover and what sits on either side.

Where 105 falls on four common charts
Chart Band that contains 105 Band above it Band below it
WISC-V (Wechsler, children) 90 to 109: Average 110 to 119: High Average 80 to 89: Low Average
Stanford-Binet 5 90 to 109: Average 110 to 119: High average 80 to 89: Low average
Woodcock-Johnson 90 to 110: Average 111 to 120: High Average 80 to 89: Low Average
Our simplified IQ ranges guide 100 to 115: high average (inside the 85 to 115 average range) 115 to 130: above average 85 to 99: low average

A gap of five points is one third of a standard deviation, between what researchers call a small (0.2) and a medium (0.5) effect in Cohen’s rule of thumb. It is real on a population average and small for any single person. Whether it is “good” depends on what the score is for. It is as good as the typical person’s and a little better, enough for ordinary school, work and daily life. It falls short of a selective cut-off such as the top 2% that societies like Mensa use, which is a score of about 130 (see Mensa IQ score requirements), and it says nothing about creativity, persistence or character. The band tables are in our guides to WISC-V scores, the Stanford-Binet and the Woodcock-Johnson, and the simplified ranges are in IQ ranges and IQ classifications.

How accurate is a reported IQ of 105?

Within a few points either way. Every test has a standard error of measurement: a person’s observed score is their true score plus chance. Our guide to what makes an IQ test reliable lists the standard errors of the main Wechsler batteries. A simple 95% band is the score plus or minus 1.96 times the standard error.

A reported 105 with a 95% band (observed score plus or minus 1.96 standard errors)
Test Standard error (points) 95% band around 105
WAIS-IV full-scale IQ 2.1 100.9 to 109.1
WISC-V full-scale IQ 2.9 99.3 to 110.7
WAIS-5 full-scale IQ 3.0 99.1 to 110.9

The bands run from about 99 to 111 on the least precise of the three. A 100 and a 105 on the same test therefore overlap, and the same person tested twice can land on either side of the line at 110 that separates Average from High Average. A reported 105 is best read as “roughly 100 to 110”. Our piece on IQ score margin of error works through the idea.

Does a 105 survive a retest, practice or new norms?

Partly. Three things move a 105 without any change in the person. First, regression to the mean: an observed score above 100 is more likely to have had some luck in it, so the expected score on a second test is 100 plus the correlation between the tests times the five points above 100. Adult rank order is stable at about .76 across five years rather than perfect (Breit and colleagues, 2024). Our page on regression to the mean explains the effect.

Expected second score after a first score of 105 (100 plus the correlation times 5)
Correlation between the two tests Expected second score
0.96 104.8
0.90 104.5
0.80 104.0
0.76 103.8

Second, practice. Retesting raises cognitive test scores by about .26 standard deviations, roughly 4 points, and more with coaching (Hausknecht and colleagues, 2007). A 105 earned on the second sitting of the same test may owe about four points to practice, which would put the unpractised score near 101.

Third, the age of the norms. Raw performance on IQ tests rose by about 0.28 points a year in a meta-analysis of 271 samples from 1909 to 2013, and the gains have slowed in recent decades (Pietschnig and Voracek, 2015). As an illustration only, assume the old rate: five points is about 18 years of drift, so a 105 on norms that old would be near 100 on fresh ones. Publishers re-norm their tests to stop this; see why IQ norms expire.

Illustration: a 105 on old norms, if the old 0.28-point rate held (not a measured conversion)
Age of the norms Drift (points) 105 on fresh norms
5 years 1.4 103.6
10 years 2.8 102.2
15 years 4.2 100.8
20 years 5.6 99.4
Your own number

Where would your own score land?

Take the IIF-certified assessment and get your score with the scale it was measured on, the percentile it corresponds to and the confidence range around it — the three figures most online tests leave out.

Find your IQ score now! →

Secure & encryptedInstant results10–20 minutes

What jobs fit an IQ of 105?

Many, because no job has an IQ requirement and the averages of jobs overlap. The widely shared “IQ by profession” charts trace to one 1945 study of 18,782 white male Army Air Force enlisted men by Harrell and Harrell, scored on the Army General Classification Test (AGCT), which used a standard deviation of 20, not 15. Our guide to average IQ by occupation gives the table and its limits. Converting a modern 105 (z = 0.33) to the AGCT scale gives about 107, which lands among the skilled trades in that table.

A slice of the 1945 AGCT table (SD 20 scale, 18,782 Army Air Force enlisted men)
Civilian occupation Mean AGCT score
Salesman 115.1
Machinist 110.1
Electrician 109.0
A modern IQ of 105, converted to the AGCT scale 106.7
Carpenter, construction 102.1
Auto mechanic 101.3
Laborer 95.8

Two cautions. These are 80-year-old means for one branch of one army, not modern IQs, and the spread within each job is wide: in the original table laborers ranged from 26 to 145 and accountants from 94 to 157. The pattern that does hold up is a group-level one: a major review found general mental ability correlates about .65 with the occupational level people reach (Schmidt and Hunter, 2004). That describes averages across thousands of workers. It does not say that a person with 105 cannot do a job, or that a person with 125 will.

Is an IQ of 105 enough for college?

IQ is not an entry requirement. Admission rests on grades, entrance exams and other records, and a 105 is above the population average. Across longitudinal studies, IQ correlates about .56 with the education people reach (Strenze, 2007), so higher scores tend to go with longer schooling in groups, with large exceptions. The figure of 115 that circulates as the “average IQ of college students” is examined in our piece on it. For how an entrance score maps onto this scale, see SAT score to IQ and does IQ predict school success.

Does an IQ of 105 mean the same at 14, 15 or 16?

Yes. A modern IQ compares a person only with people of the same age, so a 14-year-old with 105 and a 40-year-old with 105 both sit at the 63rd percentile of their own age group. Raw ability grows through childhood and the score stays anchored. The old ratio formula, mental age divided by chronological age times 100, gives a different style of answer for a child:

Mental age implied by a ratio IQ of 105 (old formula; the adult divisor is capped at 16 years)
Person Mental age In years and months
10-year-old 10.5 years 10 years 6 months
14-year-old 14.7 years 14 years 8 months
15-year-old 15.75 years 15 years 9 months
Adult (divisor capped at 16 years) 16.8 years 16 years 10 months

The ratio method is obsolete and the adult cap is a convention; our guides to IQ and mental age and deviation IQ versus ratio IQ explain why. For how raw performance changes with age, see IQ and age.

Quick answers about an IQ of 105

  • Is 105 IQ good? It is slightly above average: the 63rd percentile and the Average band on every major chart.
  • Is 105 IQ above average? Yes, by five points, one third of a standard deviation.
  • What percentile is a 105 IQ? The 63rd on a standard deviation 15 scale, the 62nd on SD 16 and the 58th on SD 24.
  • Is 105 IQ high? No. High Average starts at 110 on the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet charts.
  • Is 105 IQ dumb or low? No. It is above the mean, and no test manual uses the word dumb.
  • How accurate is a 105? Read it as roughly 100 to 110.
  • What jobs does a 105 IQ fit? Any: jobs do not set IQ cut-offs, and the averages of different jobs overlap widely.

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Bell curve of IQ scores with mean 100 and standard deviation 15, split at 90 and 110: 25 percent of people score below 90, 50 percent score between 90 and 110 with 100 at the centre, and 25 percent score above 110.Scores & Scales

What Does an IQ of 100 Mean?

An IQ of 100 is the exact average: the 50th percentile on the standard scale, with half of people scoring below and half above. Major test charts label it Average. See why 100 is the average, whether it is good, how many people score it and what it predicts.

9 min read

Bars showing the percentile a printed IQ of 115 stands for on three scales: 84.1st on the standard deviation 15 scale used by Wechsler tests, 82.6th on a standard deviation 16 scale and 73.4th on the standard deviation 24 Cattell scale.Scores & Scales

What Does an IQ of 115 Mean?

An IQ of 115 is one standard deviation above average: the 84th percentile, roughly 1 person in 6. It is High Average on the Wechsler children’s scale and means the same at any age. See how accurate a single 115 is, why labels differ, and what a printed 115 means on other scales.

8 min read

What is Average IQ Test Score?Scores & Scales

What is Average IQ Test Score?

The average IQ test score is 100 by definition. About half of people score 90 to 109 and about 68% score 85 to 115. See the average range on each chart, why the average stays at 100, how scales differ and where to find averages for groups.

9 min read

Tagged 105 iq, 105 iq jobs, 105 iq meaning, 105 iq percentile, average IQ, Flynn Effect, iq bell curve, iq margin of error, iq of 105, iq percentile, IQ Scores, is 105 iq above average, is 105 iq good, Practice Effect, standard deviation 15

Horse IQ

Posted on by Mahesh
Understanding IQ

Horse IQ: How Smart Are Horses Compared With Dogs and Humans?

Horses have no IQ score: no validated test gives one. Studies measure single skills instead. Horses matched a herd-mate’s call to the right horse, reacted to human laughter and growls, and gave weak evidence on quantity. Their brain weighs about 599 g. Clever Hans shows why animal tests need controls.

By , Intelligence Research WriterPublished October 19, 2026 · 11 min readReviewed by Aarav Vardhan, Editor-in-Chief

Three horse experiments as cards: 24 horses matched a herd-mate's whinny to the horse they had just seen, 28 horses froze for longer after recorded growls than after laughter (mean 9.27 against 5.18), and 12 Icelandic horses gave only weak evidence of choosing the larger of two quantities.

Horses do not have an IQ score. No validated intelligence test produces one for any horse, so a number quoted as a horse IQ is not a test result. What researchers have measured is a set of separate abilities, nearly always in small groups: 24 horses matched a herd-mate’s whinny to the horse they had just watched, 28 horses reacted differently to recorded human laughter and growling, and 12 Icelandic horses gave only weak evidence of telling a larger quantity from a smaller one. The brain behind this is large in absolute terms and modest in proportion to the body: across 131 horses it weighed 599 g on average, about 0.12% of body weight. This guide sets out what the studies found, how horses compare with dogs, pigs and humans, what Clever Hans taught psychologists about testing animals, and why “are horses smarter than dogs” cannot be settled on today’s evidence.

  • Horse IQ: none. There is no norm sample and no standard test, so researchers test one skill at a time, usually in a few dozen animals or fewer.
  • Brain: 131 horses had a mean fresh brain weight of 598.63 g at a mean body weight of 514.12 kg, giving an encephalization quotient of 0.78 (Cozzi and colleagues, 2014).
  • Recognition: in a 24-horse experiment, horses responded faster and looked at the speaker more when a herd-mate’s whinny came from the wrong horse (Proops, McComb and Reby, 2009).
  • Emotion: 28 horses froze for longer after recorded growls than after laughter (Smith and colleagues, 2018).
  • Quantity: contested. A 2009 study reported horses choosing the larger of two small sets; a 2012 study of 12 Icelandic horses found weak evidence.
  • Method: a 2025 systematic review of 86 articles found that studies often leave out breed, housing and feeding, which makes results hard to compare.
Three horse experiments as cards: 24 horses matched a herd-mate's whinny to the horse they had just seen, 28 horses froze for longer after recorded growls than after laughter (mean 9.27 against 5.18), and 12 Icelandic horses gave only weak evidence of choosing the larger of two quantities.
Three horse experiments as cards: 24 horses matched a herd-mate’s whinny to the horse they had just seen, 28 horses froze for longer after recorded growls than after laughter (mean 9.27 against 5.18), and 12 Icelandic horses gave only weak evidence of choosing the larger of two quantities.

Is there a horse IQ test?

No. An IQ score is a position on a bell curve: a test is given to thousands of people, the results are ranked and each person’s rank is printed on a scale whose average is 100 (see what an IQ of 100 means for the middle of that scale, with an IQ of 95 and an IQ of 105 just either side). Nothing like that exists for horses. There is no standard test, no norm sample and no agreed way to compare an Arabian with a Shetland pony, so researchers run single experiments, each measuring one narrow skill in a small group, and report whether the animals beat chance. Our explainer on how IQ tests work shows what a real score needs that a horse experiment lacks.

A 2025 systematic review in Animal Cognition shows how the field is organised. Ricci-Bonot, Brosche, Baragli and Nicol screened 1,954 records, kept 86 research articles on equine cognition and sorted them by skill: discrimination learning (28 studies), learning sets, categorisation and concept formation (27), spatial cognition (8), memory (12) and social learning. Each study tests one skill. None of them adds the skills up into a score. Popular lines such as “a horse has the mind of a toddler” borrow the idea of mental age (see IQ and mental age), but we found no published test that produced such a number for horses.

How big is a horse’s brain?

Large in absolute terms, small for the body. In a 2014 paper in Brain, Behavior and Evolution, Cozzi, Povinelli, Ballarin and Granato weighed the fresh brains of 131 horses. The mean was 598.63 g (standard error 7.65) at a mean body weight of 514.12 kg (standard error 15.42). On our arithmetic that is a brain of about 0.12% of body mass. The authors calculated an encephalization quotient of 0.78 and a cerebellar quotient of 0.841. An encephalization quotient below 1 means a brain smaller than a formula expects for that body size, and it depends on the formula and on the sample, so read 0.78 as one estimate from one set of animals.

The horse is much larger than a dog, a cat or a pig, so a brain of 599 g says little on its own. Scientists therefore compare brain with body or count neurons. Our guides to dog IQ, cat IQ and pig IQ quote cortical neuron counts (a cat about 250 million, one pig 307 million, a small mixed-breed dog 429 million, a golden retriever 627 million), and elephant IQ gives the African elephant. We found no matching count for the horse, so no table can place it among them, and a figure for the horse would have to be invented.

Can horses recognise individuals by sight and sound?

Yes, in the way the experiments test it. In a study published in PNAS in 2009, Proops, McComb and Reby tested 24 horses. Each horse watched a familiar herd-mate being led out of sight behind a barrier. After a delay of at least 10 seconds, a whinny was played from a speaker near the barrier. It came either from the horse that had just disappeared or from a different familiar herd-mate, and each horse had four counterbalanced trials. Horses responded faster when the call did not match the horse they had seen (P = 0.035), looked towards the speaker more often (P = 0.042) and looked for longer in total (P = 0.034). The authors read this as evidence that horses hold a representation of each companion that links the sight and the sound.

A follow-up in Proceedings of the Royal Society B in 2012, by Proops and McComb, carries its finding in the title: the cross-modal recognition of individuals “extends to familiar humans”. We cite it as the title states it and report no sample size, because the full methods are in the paper. Playing the call from a speaker is a basic control of this kind: the horse hears a sound that no person is producing at that moment, which matters for the Clever Hans question further down.

Can horses tell a happy human voice from an angry one?

They react differently, which is not the same as understanding the words. In a 2018 playback study in Scientific Reports, Smith, Proops, Grounds, Wathan, Scott and McComb recruited 32 horses and analysed 28 after four were excluded for distraction. In an outdoor riding arena each horse heard laughter (positive) and growling (negative) from male or female speakers, one of each, at least a week apart. The team coded how long the horse froze, what its ears did and its facial movements. Mean freeze time was 9.27 after negative sounds against 5.18 after positive ones (P = 0.006). Horses made more ear movements towards positive sounds (13.61 against 8.46, P = 0.002), and held both ears forward longer towards negative ones (20.22 against 17.73, P = 0.04). No facial action unit differed significantly by emotion.

The authors read the longer freeze and the forward ears after growls as vigilance, which suggests the horses took the negative voice as more threatening. That is a finding about reacting to the tone of a human sound. It is not a finding about vocabulary, and 28 horses from riding settings are not a sample of all horses.

Can horses count or compare quantities?

The answer depends on which study you read. Uller and Lewis reported in Animal Cognition in 2009 that horses reliably chose the larger of two quantities when the numbers were small, in contrasts such as 2 versus 1. A later attempt, by Henselek, Fischer and Schloegl in 2012, tested 12 Icelandic horses, nine of which reached the training criterion. The horses chose between apple slices or wooden blocks in six pairs across three ratios (1:2, 1:3 and 2:3). The authors found only weak evidence of quantity discrimination, and stimulus type made no difference. The one result above chance at group level, for 1 versus 3, came with a median success rate below 60%.

The 2025 review lists a third result: Balestrieri and colleagues (2024) found that horses failed a quantity task and showed a left-side bias. A bias towards one side is a reminder of how easily an animal’s habits, not its understanding of number, can drive the outcome. For comparison, our guides to crow IQ and chimpanzee IQ describe quantity tasks in species where the results are firmer.

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What else have horses done in the lab?

The review gathers a long list of small experiments. The table picks five from it, with the number of animals and the outcome as the review reports them.

Five horse experiments summarised in the 2025 review (small groups, one skill each)
Task Horses Outcome Study
Pick a symbol to signal blanket preference 23 All 23 discriminated the symbols Mejdell and colleagues, 2016
Tell two dog toys apart 33 27 learned it (81.8%); only one matched real-object training to images Kappel and colleagues, 2023
Learn “same as” and “different from” 7 ponies Four learned it and transferred it to new stimuli Gabor and Gerken, 2012
Recognise itself in a mirror 4 No consistent evidence of self-recognition Baragli and colleagues, 2017
Detour around a barrier to food 11 horses, 11 ponies About 45% of ponies succeeded, against 36% of horses after a demonstration Henriksson and colleagues, 2019

Read the table the way the review does. The groups are small, ponies and horses are not the same, and the percentages come from different set-ups, so none of the rows ranks one horse above another. The mirror result is typical of the field: a test built for apes and elephants does not transfer cleanly. Our guide to elephant IQ describes the mark test and how few species pass it.

What was Clever Hans, and why does it matter for animal IQ?

Clever Hans was a horse in Germany in the early 1900s whose owner, Wilhelm von Osten, said he could do arithmetic by tapping a hoof. A 13-person panel formed by the psychologist Carl Stumpf concluded in September 1904 that there was no trick. The psychologist Oskar Pfungst then ran the controls the panel had not. He showed that Hans was responding to involuntary cues in the questioner’s body language: the questioner’s tension rose as the right number of taps approached and relaxed at the last one. When the questioner did not know the answer, or Hans could not see the questioner, he failed. Pfungst published the work in German in 1907 and in English in 1911 (the English text is online at Project Gutenberg, linked below).

The lesson reached well beyond horses. The “Clever Hans effect” is the name for a subject responding to cues the experimenter does not know they are giving. It is why animal studies often play calls from speakers and use experimenters who do not know the correct answer. The same logic sits behind human testing: an examiner follows a standard script so that nothing in tone or timing helps one person and not another (see how IQ tests work and cultural bias in IQ tests). Hans was showing a real ability, reading people, and it was being credited to arithmetic.

Are horses smarter than dogs?

No study answers it. The claim rests on separate experiments with different animals, tasks and training, and on brain figures that cannot be lined up, because we found a horse brain weight and encephalization quotient but no cortical neuron count to set beside the dog and cat counts. On behaviour, dogs and horses are both tested on recognition of people and on social cues, but never on the same tasks under the same rules. Questions such as horse versus donkey or horse versus cow have the same answer: we found no study that tests them head to head.

For the other animals in our series, see dog IQ, pig IQ, parrot IQ, octopus IQ, dolphin IQ and gorilla IQ. The fair summary is that horses belong with the animals that learn discriminations, recognise familiar individuals across senses and react to the tone of human voices. A single horse IQ would be invented.

Why do horse results come from so few animals?

Because horse cognition has been studied in pockets, and the studies are described unevenly. The 2025 review found that age (96.51% of studies) and sex (95.35%) were nearly always reported, while breed (67.44%), housing (68.60%), riding status (56.98%) and feeding (72.09%) were reported less often. Breed reporting largely disappeared after 2006. Only 3 of 11 multi-breed discrimination studies tested whether breed mattered, and where age or sex was tested it often made no difference, with one exception: older horses learned better in a discrimination study (Kappel and colleagues). Only 2 of 12 memory studies examined contextual factors, with mixed results.

None of that makes the findings wrong. It limits how far they stretch: read “horses can tell a growl from laughter” as “28 horses reacted differently”, and expect better reporting before anyone can rank breeds or compare horses with other species. The review itself calls for better reporting of subject characteristics and for standardised methods.

Quick answers about horse IQ

  • What is the IQ of a horse? There is none. No validated test produces a horse IQ.
  • What is horse IQ compared to a human? No test compares them. A horse brain weighs about 599 g on average, but there is no neuron count to set beside the human figures.
  • Horse IQ vs dog IQ: who wins? Nobody has tested them on the same tasks.
  • Are horses smart? They learn discriminations, tell familiar individuals apart by sight and sound and react to the tone of human voices, in small studies.
  • Can horses count? Disputed: one 2009 study found a preference for the larger set, a 2012 study of 12 horses found weak evidence.
  • Can horses recognise themselves in a mirror? Not shown: four horses showed no consistent evidence of self-recognition.
  • What was Clever Hans? A horse that seemed to do arithmetic and was in fact reading his questioner’s body language.

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Bar chart of breed-level heritability for four dog cognitive abilities: inhibitory control 0.70, communication 0.39, physical reasoning 0.21 and memory 0.17.Understanding IQ

Dog IQ

Dogs do not have an IQ: no validated test gives them one. Researchers can measure trainability, memory, self-control and a small general factor, and those results say more about how dogs think than any breed ranking, at-home dog IQ test or "as smart as a toddler" comparison ever could.

7 min read

Bar chart of the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex: domestic cat about 250 million, domestic pig 307 million, small mixed-breed dog 429 million and golden retriever 627 million, from counts by Kazu and colleagues (2014) and Jardim-Messeder and colleagues (2017), with the human cortex at about 16.3 billion for scale.Understanding IQ

Pig IQ

Pigs have no IQ score: no validated test gives one. Studies measure single skills instead. Four pigs acquired a joystick video task, pigs follow each other to food and read some human cues, a mirror result failed to replicate, and one pig cortex held 307 million neurons, between a cat and a dog.

11 min read

Bar charts of neuron counts: the African elephant brain holds 257 billion neurons against 86 billion in the human brain, but the elephant cerebral cortex holds 5.6 billion against 16.3 billion in the human cortex, from a 2014 count by Herculano-Houzel and colleagues.Understanding IQ

Elephant IQ

Elephants have no IQ score: no validated test gives one. Studies measure single skills instead. One of three Asian elephants passed the mirror mark test, six waited for a partner before pulling a rope, and wild herds use name-like calls, yet one elephant’s cortex held 5.6 billion neurons, a third of the human count.

10 min read

Tagged animal cognition, animal intelligence, animal iq, are horses smart, clever hans, comparative cognition, equine cognition, horse brain, horse cognition, horse intelligence, horse iq, horse iq compared to human, horse iq vs dog iq, how smart are horses, what is the iq of a horse

What Does an IQ of 100 Mean?

Posted on by Mahesh
Scores & Scales

What Does an IQ of 100 Mean? Is It Average, Good or Low?

An IQ of 100 is the exact average: the 50th percentile on the standard scale, with half of people scoring below and half above. Major test charts label it Average. See why 100 is the average, whether it is good, how many people score it and what it predicts.

By , Data & Research AnalystPublished October 16, 2026 · 9 min readReviewed by Aarav Vardhan, Editor-in-Chief

Bell curve of IQ scores with mean 100 and standard deviation 15, split at 90 and 110: 25 percent of people score below 90, 50 percent score between 90 and 110 with 100 at the centre, and 25 percent score above 110.

An IQ of 100 is the average: on the standard scale (mean 100, standard deviation 15) it is the 50th percentile, so half of all people score below it and half score above it. It is neither low nor high. The Wechsler children’s test (WISC-V), the Stanford-Binet 5 and the Woodcock-Johnson all label 100 Average, and about half of all people score between 90 and 110. It is the one score that sits at the 50th percentile on every scale, and about 1 person in 38 scores exactly 100. This guide shows where 100 sits on the bell curve, why 100 is the average at all, how the label differs by chart, whether 100 is good, and what it does and does not predict.

  • Percentile: 50th on a standard deviation 15, 16 or 24 scale alike (our normal-curve arithmetic).
  • Rarity: the opposite of rare. About 1 person in 38 scores exactly 100, and half of all people score between 90 and 110.
  • Label: Average on the WISC-V and Stanford-Binet 5 (90 to 109) and on the Woodcock-Johnson (90 to 110); the first score of “high average” on our simplified chart (100 to 115).
  • Accuracy: read a reported 100 as roughly 95 to 105.
  • Retest: 100 is the one score that does not regress: the expected next score is 100.
  • Prediction: a meta-analysis found IQ correlates .56 with education, .43 with occupation and .20 with income (Strenze, 2007): tendencies in groups, not limits on a person.
Bell curve of IQ scores with mean 100 and standard deviation 15, split at 90 and 110: 25 percent of people score below 90, 50 percent score between 90 and 110 with 100 at the centre, and 25 percent score above 110.
Bell curve of IQ scores with mean 100 and standard deviation 15, split at 90 and 110: 25 percent of people score below 90, 50 percent score between 90 and 110 with 100 at the centre, and 25 percent score above 110.

The figure marks the middle half of the curve: 25% of people score below 90, 49.5% score between 90 and 110, with 100 at the centre, and 25% score above 110. Our guides to an IQ of 90, an IQ of 97, an IQ of 110 and an IQ of 115 cover the scores around it.

What percentile is an IQ of 100?

By construction, the 50th. A 100 is the median and the mean of the norm sample (z = 0), which is why it sits at the middle of the bell curve. The table places the scores around it on the same curve, and our IQ percentile calculator does the same for any score. For the whole curve, see the IQ bell curve.

Scores around 100 on the standard scale (mean 100, SD 15, our normal-curve arithmetic)
IQ score Scoring at or below Scoring higher
85 15.9% 84.1%
90 25.2% 74.8%
95 36.9% 63.1%
100 50.0% 50.0%
105 63.1% 36.9%
110 74.8% 25.2%
115 84.1% 15.9%

The printed number depends on the scale, but 100 is the exception. Most modern tests use a standard deviation of 15, older Stanford-Binet editions used 16 and the Cattell scales use 24. Because the average is fixed at 100 on all of them, a printed 100 is the 50th percentile on each, while a 110 is not: it falls at the 75th percentile on one scale and the 66th on another. Our explainer on standard deviation 15 versus 16 walks through the arithmetic, and the IQ score converter moves a score between scales. A percentile is a position within a norm sample of people, which is also why animals have no IQ score; our guide to pig IQ shows what researchers measure instead.

The same printed scores on three scales (our normal-curve arithmetic)
Scale Percentile of a printed 100 Percentile of a printed 110
Standard deviation 15 (Wechsler, current Stanford-Binet) 50.0% 74.8%
Standard deviation 16 (older Stanford-Binet, some school tests) 50.0% 73.4%
Standard deviation 24 (Cattell) 50.0% 66.2%

Why is 100 the average IQ?

Because test makers set it there. An IQ scale is built, not discovered. On the old ratio formula, William Stern proposed the “mental quotient” in 1912 (mental age divided by chronological age) and Lewis Terman multiplied it by 100 for the 1916 Stanford-Binet, so a child performing exactly at their age scored 100. Wechsler’s 1939 Wechsler-Bellevue scale replaced the ratio with the deviation IQ: a score compared only with people of the same age, with the mean fixed at 100 and the spread at 15. Modern tests do the same with norm samples of thousands of people. Our guides to deviation IQ versus ratio IQ and IQ and mental age tell the story in full.

A 100 is therefore the average of the norm sample at the time the test was normed, and that matters because raw performance has drifted upward. A meta-analysis of 271 samples from 1909 to 2013 estimated gains of 0.28 full-scale IQ points a year, roughly 3 points a decade, and found that the gains have decreased in more recent decades (Pietschnig and Voracek, 2015). As an illustration only, twenty years at 0.28 a year is 5.6 points, which would turn a 100 on stale norms into roughly a 94 on fresh ones. That is why publishers re-norm their tests; see why IQ norms expire.

Is an IQ of 100 good, average or low?

It is average on every major chart. The table shows where 100 falls on the charts we cover and what sits on either side.

Where 100 falls on four common charts
Chart Band that contains 100 Band above it Band below it
WISC-V (Wechsler, children) 90 to 109: Average 110 to 119: High Average 80 to 89: Low Average
Stanford-Binet 5 90 to 109: Average 110 to 119: High average 80 to 89: Low average
Woodcock-Johnson 90 to 110: Average 111 to 120: High Average 80 to 89: Low Average
Our simplified IQ ranges guide 85 to 115: average range, with 100 to 115 called high average 115 to 130: above average 70 to 85: borderline to low average

Whether it is “good” depends on what the score is for. It is as good as the typical person’s: enough for ordinary school, work and daily life, where most people do well with scores near it. It falls short of a selective cut-off such as the top 2% that societies like Mensa use (see Mensa IQ score requirements), and it says nothing about creativity, persistence or character. The detailed band tables are in our guides to WISC-V scores, the Stanford-Binet and the Woodcock-Johnson, and the simplified ranges are in IQ ranges and IQ classifications.

How many people have an IQ of exactly 100?

About 1 in 38 (2.7%) if you round to whole numbers, which makes 100 the most common single score but still a small slice of the whole curve. The first table shows how many people fall within a given distance of 100, and the second shows how fast the share at any one exact score drops as you move away from the centre.

Share of people within a distance of 100 (SD 15, our normal-curve arithmetic)
Range Share of people Share outside it
Within 5 points (95 to 105) 26.1% 1 in 1.4
Within 10 points (90 to 110) 49.5% 1 in 2.0
Within 15 points (85 to 115) 68.3% 1 in 3.2
Within 30 points (70 to 130) 95.4% 1 in 22
Share of people at one exact whole-number score (our normal-curve arithmetic)
Exact score Share of people Rarity
100 2.66% 1 in 38
95 or 105 2.52% 1 in 40
90 or 110 2.13% 1 in 47
85 or 115 1.61% 1 in 62
70 or 130 0.36% 1 in 278

So a 100 is typical in two senses: it is the centre of the curve, and it is shared by the most people. A class of 30 pupils has, on average, one pupil whose score is exactly 100.

Is an IQ of 100 the average of the world?

Not as a measurement. A test’s 100 is the average of the norm sample it was built on, usually a census-matched sample from one country or region at one time. It is not a count of everyone on Earth. National averages quoted in rankings come from other sources of varying quality and disagree with one another, so they are not read from a single test with a single 100. Our pages on average IQ by country, the 2026 online ranking and average IQ by US state explain what each figure rests on.

Your own number

Where would your own score land?

Take the IIF-certified assessment and get your score with the scale it was measured on, the percentile it corresponds to and the confidence range around it — the three figures most online tests leave out.

Find your IQ score now! →

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Is an IQ of 100 average for a 13-year-old?

Yes, and for a 40-year-old too. IQ is compared with people of the same age, so a 13-year-old who scores 100 performed like the average 13-year-old, and a 40-year-old who scores 100 performed like the average 40-year-old. Raw ability grows through childhood and falls later in life, but the score stays anchored at 100 for each age group. For how raw performance changes with age, see IQ and age, the IQ scale by age and at what age intelligence peaks.

What happens when a score of 100 is retested?

On average, nothing. Scores regress toward the average when they are repeated: the expected second score is 100 plus the correlation between the tests times the distance of the first score from 100. For a first score of 100 that distance is zero, so the expected second score is 100 whatever the correlation. An individual’s score still moves: the standard error of measurement is commonly 2 to 3 points on a full-scale adult battery, so a reported 100 is best read as 95 to 105, and adult rank order is stable at about .76 across five years rather than perfect (Breit and colleagues, 2024). The systematic change when the same test is taken again is practice: retesting raises cognitive test scores by about .26 standard deviations, roughly 4 points, and more with coaching (Hausknecht and colleagues, 2007). Our pages on regression to the mean and IQ score margin of error explain both effects.

What does an IQ of 100 predict?

Test scores predict later outcomes in groups, but loosely. A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies found correlations of .56 with educational attainment, .43 with occupational level and .20 with income (Strenze, 2007). Squared, those figures say how much of the spread in an outcome goes with the score: about 31% for education, 18% for occupation and 4% for income. A 100 is the centre of every one of those distributions, so it shifts the odds towards the middle and sets no ceiling and no floor for an individual.

For the detail behind those numbers, see does IQ predict school success, does IQ predict income, average IQ by education level and average IQ by occupation. For how a college entrance score maps onto this scale, see SAT score to IQ, and for the average itself see what the average IQ test score is.

What does "100 IQ" mean in memes and games?

Something different from the score. In gaming and meme slang, “100 IQ play” is often used to praise a clever move, which is a joke on the number: the literal score for an average player is 100. The bell-curve meme that puts 100 in the middle plays on the same idea; our piece on the midwit meme explains what it gets right and wrong. Neither usage tells you anything about a real test result.

Quick answers about an IQ of 100

  • Is an IQ of 100 good? It is average: the 50th percentile, and the label on every major chart.
  • Is 100 IQ above average? No. It is exactly the average, with half of people below and half above.
  • Is 100 IQ low or dumb? No. “Dumb” is not a term any test manual uses, and 100 is the centre of the curve.
  • What percentile is an IQ of 100? The 50th on a standard deviation 15, 16 or 24 scale.
  • How rare is an IQ of 100? Not rare at all: about 1 person in 38 scores exactly 100, and half score between 90 and 110.
  • Is 100 IQ good for a 13-year-old? It is average for a 13-year-old, because scores are compared with people of the same age.
  • How accurate is a score of 100? Read it as roughly 95 to 105.

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Bell curve of IQ scores with mean 100 and standard deviation 15, split at 90 and 110: 25 percent of people score 90 or lower, 50 percent score between 90 and 110 and 25 percent score 110 or higher.Scores & Scales

What Does an IQ of 90 Mean?

An IQ of 90 is the 25th percentile on the standard scale: about 1 person in 4 scores 90 or lower. Major test charts call it the bottom of the Average band, while simpler charts call it low average. See what 90 means, how accurate it is and what it predicts.

7 min read

Bars showing the percentile a printed IQ of 115 stands for on three scales: 84.1st on the standard deviation 15 scale used by Wechsler tests, 82.6th on a standard deviation 16 scale and 73.4th on the standard deviation 24 Cattell scale.Scores & Scales

What Does an IQ of 115 Mean?

An IQ of 115 is one standard deviation above average: the 84th percentile, roughly 1 person in 6. It is High Average on the Wechsler children’s scale and means the same at any age. See how accurate a single 115 is, why labels differ, and what a printed 115 means on other scales.

8 min read

What is Average IQ Test Score?Scores & Scales

What is Average IQ Test Score?

The average IQ test score is 100 by definition. About half of people score 90 to 109 and about 68% score 85 to 115. See the average range on each chart, why the average stays at 100, how scales differ and where to find averages for groups.

9 min read

Tagged 100 iq, 100 iq meaning, 100 iq percentile, average IQ, average iq score, deviation iq, Flynn Effect, iq bell curve, iq margin of error, iq of 100, iq percentile, IQ Scores, is 100 iq average, is 100 iq good, Regression to the Mean, standard deviation 15

Pig IQ

Posted on by Mahesh
Understanding IQ

Pig IQ: How Smart Are Pigs Compared With Dogs and Humans?

Pigs have no IQ score: no validated test gives one. Studies measure single skills instead. Four pigs acquired a joystick video task, pigs follow each other to food and read some human cues, a mirror result failed to replicate, and one pig cortex held 307 million neurons, between a cat and a dog.

By , Intelligence Research WriterPublished October 16, 2026 · 11 min readReviewed by Aarav Vardhan, Editor-in-Chief

Bar chart of the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex: domestic cat about 250 million, domestic pig 307 million, small mixed-breed dog 429 million and golden retriever 627 million, from counts by Kazu and colleagues (2014) and Jardim-Messeder and colleagues (2017), with the human cortex at about 16.3 billion for scale.

Pigs do not have an IQ score. No validated intelligence test produces one for any pig, so a number quoted as a pig IQ is not a test result. What researchers have measured is a set of separate abilities, nearly always in small groups: four pigs acquired a joystick-controlled cursor task, 16 pigs foraging in pairs showed that a pig remembers where food was and that a second pig follows the first to find it, 17 piglets used a person’s pointing to find a reward, and a well-known mirror result failed to replicate in 22 piglets. The brain behind this is modest in neuron counts: one domestic pig’s cerebral cortex held about 307 million neurons, more than a cat’s (about 250 million) and fewer than a small dog’s (429 million). This guide sets out what the studies found, how pigs compare with dogs, cats and humans, and why “pigs are smarter than dogs” cannot be tested on today’s evidence.

  • Pig IQ: none. There is no norm sample and no standard test, so researchers test one skill at a time, usually in a handful of animals.
  • Brain: one domestic pig of about 100 kg had a brain of 64 g holding 2.22 billion neurons, 307 million of them in the cerebral cortex (Kazu and colleagues, 2014, with the 2015 correction; one animal).
  • Video task: two Panepinto micro pigs and two Yorkshire pigs acquired a joystick-operated cursor task, and all four were above chance on first attempts at the one-walled targets (Croney and Boysen, 2021).
  • Social foraging: in an “informed forager” task, pigs remembered a food site and uninformed pigs found food by following them (Held and colleagues, 2000; 16 pigs).
  • Mirror: contested. A 2009 study reported pigs using a mirror to find food; a 2014 replication with two groups of 11 piglets found very few that did (Gieling and colleagues).
Bar chart of the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex: domestic cat about 250 million, domestic pig 307 million, small mixed-breed dog 429 million and golden retriever 627 million, from counts by Kazu and colleagues (2014) and Jardim-Messeder and colleagues (2017), with the human cortex at about 16.3 billion for scale.
Bar chart of the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex: domestic cat about 250 million, domestic pig 307 million, small mixed-breed dog 429 million and golden retriever 627 million, from counts by Kazu and colleagues (2014) and Jardim-Messeder and colleagues (2017), with the human cortex at about 16.3 billion for scale.

Is there a pig IQ test?

No. An IQ score is a position on a bell curve: a test is given to thousands of people, the results are ranked and each person’s rank is printed on a scale whose average is 100 (see what an IQ of 100 means for what the middle of that scale is). Nothing like that exists for pigs. There is no standard test, no norm sample and no agreed way to compare a Yorkshire pig with a micro pig, so researchers run single experiments, each measuring one narrow skill in a small group, and report whether the animals beat chance. Our explainer on how IQ tests work shows what a real score needs that a pig experiment lacks. (“Guinea pig IQ” is a different question: guinea pigs are rodents, not pigs. This guide covers the domestic pig, Sus scrofa domestica.)

Two reviews explain why the evidence is hard to stack up. A 2011 review of pig learning and memory in Animal Cognition found that behavioural studies show pigs can perform learning and memory tasks, but that results have not been replicated or proven replicable because validated, specially suited paradigms are lacking. A second 2011 review of cognitive tasks for pigs, in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, noted that most tasks have only been established at a single research facility and would benefit from further validation. Both are about method, not about pigs being dull: the measuring is immature. Popular lines such as “a pig is as clever as a three-year-old child” borrow the idea of mental age (see IQ and mental age), but we found no published test that produced such a number for pigs.

How big is a pig’s brain, and what does it hold?

Smaller than the body suggests, and more crowded than it looks. A 2014 count in Frontiers in Neuroanatomy used the isotropic fractionator method on the brains of five hoofed mammals, the domestic pig among them, and a 2015 corrigendum corrected parts of its main table. The pig was a single animal of about 100 kg from a local breeder in South Africa. Its brain weighed 64.2 g, of which the cerebral cortex (counted together with the hippocampus) was 42.2 g. The whole brain held 2.22 billion neurons: 307 million in the cortex, 1.86 billion in the cerebellum and the rest elsewhere. About 84% of the pig’s neurons therefore sit in the cerebellum and about 14% in the cortex.

Neurons in the cerebral cortex of the animals in our guides (counts from three studies; one or two animals each)
Animal Neurons in the cerebral cortex Study
Domestic cat About 250 million Jardim-Messeder and colleagues, 2017
Domestic pig (one animal of about 100 kg) 307 million Kazu and colleagues, 2014
Small mixed-breed dog 429 million Jardim-Messeder and colleagues, 2017
Golden retriever 627 million Jardim-Messeder and colleagues, 2017
African elephant (one adult male) 5.6 billion Herculano-Houzel and colleagues, 2014
Human About 16.3 billion As quoted by Herculano-Houzel and colleagues, 2014

Read the table with care. The animals counted are few, the regions are not defined identically in every study, and more neurons do not simply mean more intelligence. With those caveats, the pig’s 307 million is about 1.2 times the cat figure, about 72% of the small mixed-breed dog’s and about half the golden retriever’s, and it is 1.9% of the human cortex. Across the whole brain, 2.22 billion neurons is about 2.6% of the 86 billion average for a human. Our guides to dog IQ, cat IQ and elephant IQ give the other rows in more detail.

The authors flag two oddities. The pig is an outlier in the relationship between brain mass and body mass, with a much larger body than expected for its brain, which they note is a probable consequence of domestication. And although hoofed mammals have a highly folded cortex, the paper’s conclusion is that the artiodactyl cortex is more convoluted than primate cortices with similar numbers of neurons: wrinkles are not a neuron count. A big body and a folded brain are poor shortcuts for how many cells do the computing.

Can pigs play a video game?

Four of them acquired one. In a 2021 study in Frontiers in Psychology, two Panepinto micro pigs and two Yorkshire pigs were trained to move a joystick that controlled a cursor on a monitor. The pigs had to steer the cursor into targets with three, two or one walls, placed at random positions on the screen, and a reward followed when the cursor made contact. The authors say the task needed a conceptual understanding as well as skilled movement. At the end of training all four pigs were significantly above chance on first attempts to contact the one-walled targets.

Two cautions come with the headline. Four animals is a very small sample, and the authors themselves note that the joystick method was limited by the pigs’ dexterity and vision, suggesting that touchscreens or other computer-interfaced technology would suit future studies better. The result shows what pigs can learn when trained, not how quickly or how well a typical pig does it.

Do pigs follow other pigs and read human cues?

Yes to both, within limits. In the 2000 “informed forager” study in Animal Behaviour, 16 pigs foraged in pairs in an arena where food was hidden in one of eight buckets. One pig of each pair first searched alone and learned where the food was. In the pair trial the other pig, which did not know, was heavier and could push its partner off the baited bucket. The informed pigs found the food with fewer bucket investigations than a random searcher would need, so they remembered the site. The uninformed pigs investigated a bucket right after their partner more often than chance predicts, and needed fewer investigations than a random searcher in pair trials but not in solo trials, which means they used the other pig as a guide.

People are a second source of cues. A study in Animal Cognition tested 17 piglets, 7 weeks old and with little human contact, in an object choice task: two bowls, one baited. Across five experiments the piglets used nearby pointing and, with some constraints, pointing from a distance, as well as the experimenter’s body and head orientation. Most of them struggled when the experimenter pointed from the wrong bowl towards the right one, and they did not follow a gaze directed into empty space. The authors ask whether the pigs grasped the communicative intent or simply used attention-drawing and learned associations, and the paper does not settle it. Our guides to dog IQ and cat IQ describe pointing tests in those species.

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Can pigs use a mirror?

This is the pig result most often repeated and the one that did not hold up. A 2009 study in Animal Behaviour reported that pigs given time with a mirror could use it to find food: a bowl was placed where it could be seen only in the mirror, and mirror-experienced pigs went around a barrier to reach it. Published coverage of the study gave the numbers as seven of eight pigs finding the bowl in about 23 seconds on average. A 2014 attempt to replicate it, in Applied Animal Behaviour Science, used two groups of 11 piglets and followed the original procedure as closely as the authors could. Only two pigs of the first group found the hidden bowl. After steps to make more pigs notice the mirror, only one mirror-experienced pig and none of the mirror-naive pigs took the detour. The authors concluded that the pigs did not understand what the mirror image represents, and that mirror use may be at the upper limit of what these animals can do at that age.

Neither study is a self-recognition test of the kind used for apes and elephants, where an animal touches a mark on its own body (see elephant IQ). The question here was whether a mirror can serve as a tool for finding food. The honest summary is that one study found the skill, one failed to find it, and the question is open.

Are pigs smarter than dogs?

No study answers it. The claim rests on separate experiments with different animals, tasks and training, and on neuron counts that are close enough to be inconclusive: one pig’s 307 million cortical neurons sit between a cat and a dog, and the two dogs counted held 429 and 627 million. On behaviour, dogs have been tested on far more tasks, which is not the same as being cleverer. A 2015 review by Marino and Colvin pulls the pig studies together and concludes that they point to a complex psychology, and it calls for more noninvasive research in settings where pigs can express natural abilities. It is a narrative review, so it argues for more work, not for a ranking.

For the other animals in our series, see chimpanzee IQ, crow IQ, parrot IQ, octopus IQ, dolphin IQ and gorilla IQ. The fair summary is that pigs belong with the animals that show flexible learning, social foraging and some reading of human cues, but no study ranks them against dogs, and a single pig IQ would be invented.

Why do pig results come from so few animals?

Because pig cognition has been studied in pockets. The studies above used 4, 16, 17 and 22 pigs, and the brain counts rest on one animal. They also mix farm breeds with micro pigs, which differ in size and in how they handle a joystick or a bowl. Pigs are studied partly because their brains resemble the human brain more closely than a rodent’s in anatomy and biochemistry, which makes them attractive models in neuroscience (Kornum and Knudsen, 2011), and partly for welfare, so the tasks are often built for other purposes than ranking species. None of that makes the findings wrong. It limits how far they stretch: read “pigs can play a video game” as “four trained pigs did”, and wait for replication.

Quick answers about pig IQ

  • What is the IQ of a pig? There is none. No validated test produces a pig IQ.
  • What is pig IQ compared to a human? No test compares them. The one pig cortex counted held about 1.9% of the neurons in a human cortex.
  • Pig IQ vs dog IQ: who wins? Nobody has tested them on the same tasks. The pig’s cortical neuron count (307 million) is between a cat’s and a dog’s.
  • Are pigs smart? They learn tasks, remember where food was, follow other pigs to food and use some human cues, in small studies that need replication.
  • Can pigs play video games? Four pigs acquired a joystick-operated cursor task.
  • Can pigs recognise themselves in a mirror? That has not been shown. A 2009 report of pigs using a mirror to find food did not replicate in 2014.
  • Is a guinea pig a pig? No. Guinea pigs are rodents.

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