I used to put my cat up to the mirror and it would just ignore itself. But some cats... they freak out!
So what's up with mirrors? Why do they make some animals go crazy?
Hey there, cool cats! Trace here for DNews.
Thanks for watching.
Mirrors show us what we look like but they are not perfect. Our right is our left, our left is our right. And if you're
trying to manipulate something using a mirror, it can get really confusing really fast. And you can see what happens when you show one to a
chimpanzee in this YouTube video captured by French wildlife experts Anne-Marie and Xavier Hubert-Brierre.
Usually when an animal sees its own reflection, it lashes out aggressively or withdraws in fear because it
thinks it's another animal. We know that the chimps don't understand what they're seeing as a reflection because in 1970 Gordon Gallup, Jr.
created a self-awareness test called "The Mirror Test". If you secretly put a bit of dye or paint onto an animal's face and then it
sees a reflection,
self-aware animals will go right for the paint poking it, touching. Non self-aware animals won't. It's a simple enough test.
That's been replicated many many times. The idea is marking the body is testing the "theory of mind" or ability to imagine
what others are thinking and feeling
separate from yourself. The reason animals don't recognize themselves, say scientists, is because they don't have high levels of self-awareness.
We can watch as human babies develop this self-awareness too. Young babies
love to look at mirrors.
But they have no idea that other baby isn't a stranger until they're like 15 to 18 months old.
And then if there's a mark on their face,
they will touch a finger to it showing they understand it is their own reflection and not some other baby.
Eventually chimps figure this out too,
and will begin exploring the mirror. Looking at their tongue, flopping their arms around, and making odd body motions...
Animal psychologist Diana Rice calls this the "Groucho Stage".
But eventually once they understand what the reflection is, they'll use it to see parts of their body that are normally
invisible to them like their back. Scientists keep testing animals in this way and so far only bonobos, orangutans, dolphins, orcas, elephants, humans,
magpies and possibly pigeons have passed the mirror test. Interestingly
gorillas don't, leopards don't, fish don't either. And most birds will simply just attack their own
reflexions. Gibbons and macaques gesture at their face indicating that they understand something weird is going on
but they don't fully recognize the truth. Dogs
spend a little while trying to attack or play with the other dog before giving up and ignoring their own reflection altogether. And cats have
never passed either. Sometimes it'd say the pass of a mirror test means the animal understands self-awareness.
But that's problematic.
Non-Western children don't pass the mirror test even by the age of 6. Studies with Kenyan children showed that they can become very
uncomfortable when put in front of the mirror indicating they understand self-awareness.
But lead researcher Tania Brouch believes that they don't fully pass because their society values being part of a larger social group rather than individuality.
Self-Awareness might be a continuum, and not a hard-and-fast line, say animal researchers. So next time you're asking your mirror "Mirror,
who is the fairest?", just make sure that you give animals a fair
shake too.
It's important to note
not all animals value sight as much as we do.
Elephants in the wild will pass the mirror test only about half of the time
even though we believe they're self-aware. This may be because they use sound, touch and scent for identification
over sight. One thing is for sure, however, any videos of animals and babies seeing a reflection...
they're just golden! If you wanted to start a website where you could collect all of these mirror test videos, you could go over to
Domain.com and pick up "mirror.video" or "mirror.zone", "mirror.science", "mirrorcentral.com" or even "mirrortest.net".
No domain extension will help you tell your story like a ".com" or a ".net"
domain name. And because you watch Dnews, you can get 15% off of your domain.com's, names and web hosting
by using the code "DNEWS" when you check out. If you ever showed your pet or baby a mirror...
What happened? Share it with us in the comments. Make sure you subscribe for more Dnews. And we'll see you later.