I also remember Hans the counting horse. Turns out Hans couldn't count when he was removed from his owner. Hans didn't understand numbers, but he understood when to stop tapping his hoof by reading the facial expression and body language of his owner.

Hans wasn't as smart as some people wanted to believe, but he was still a very smart horse to have such keen social insight. And all horses possess intelligence in some amount.

Humans invent stuff (without realising) it to, so I don't think that's enough to disqualify something from being intelligent.

The interesting question is how much of this is due to the training goal basically being "a sufficiently convincing response to satisfy a person" (pretty much the same as on social media) and how much of it is a fundamental flaw in the whole idea.