Can animals recognize themselves in a mirror? The answer is surprising →

Attention, pet owners, bring your pets and look here, look here... Today we are going to discuss, when an animal looks in the mirror, can it realize that the one in the mirror is itself?

Current research suggests that cats and dogs cannot recognize themselves in the mirror, but they can observe their owners through the mirror; and primates can.

01. Mirror test

In fact, this is a series of classic studies. In the last century, biology was in the era of classical biology. People did biology that was popular with the general public, such as the behavior of various organisms. The famous British naturalist Jane Goodall's observation of orangutans belongs to this category. Darwin also belongs to this category. It's not like now that we are in the era of molecular biology, and we are studying all kinds of weird genes~~~

Among them, observing the IQ of animals is an important topic, and the research method is: mirror test .

The researchers extrapolated their own thoughts and believed that if an animal had intelligence, it should be able to recognize itself in the mirror .

02. Did the cat pass the test?

So a lot of animal research was carried out.

Mirror test: This is a test developed by Gordon Gallup. The specific method is to sedate an animal and apply a spot of odorless pigment to its body (usually the forehead), which must be visible in a mirror. The animal is then placed in front of a mirror to observe whether the animal reacts to the spot. These reactions include turning around and adjusting the body posture to better observe the mark in the mirror, or trying to touch the mark on its body with its limbs while looking in the mirror.

Next, the animals were tested. The cats didn’t pass the test.

Image from Science Popularization China

As shown in the picture above, the cat will not paint the mark on its head at all, it just treats the cat in the mirror as another cat.

Just like in many videos about cats, you can see similar phenomena, where cats will fight with themselves in the mirror.

So, what does a cat see in a mirror? This???

Haha, in fact, the same is true for dogs

Cannot pass the mirror test.

03. What about primates?

But primates are amazing. Gorillas and others can easily pass the mirror test.

They can easily look in the mirror to find problems in themselves, just like us humans.

Rhesus monkeys also seem to be able to

04. Does it have something to do with IQ?

However, does this really mean that cats and dogs have low IQs? I believe that people who have raised cats and dogs will strongly deny this. In fact, cats and dogs are very smart, and the learning ability of dogs and cats is simply super strong.

In fact, today we have a deeper understanding of IQ. For example, if you randomly find a definition of IQ,

Intelligence is manifested in many aspects, such as observation, memory, imagination, creativity, analytical judgment, thinking, adaptability, reasoning, etc., which includes cultural intelligence (CQ). It is currently believed that intelligence consists of three abilities: short-term memory, reasoning ability and language ability.

It can be seen that our mirror test on animals was very primitive. There are many factors affecting intelligence. For example, when doing neurobiology now, there is often a maze test, which is a way to test their cognitive ability.

Morris water maze (MWM) experiment is an experiment that forces experimental animals (rats and mice) to swim and learn to find a platform hidden in the water. It is mainly used to test the learning and memory ability of experimental animals for spatial position and direction (spatial positioning). It is widely used in scientific research and computer-assisted teaching in many disciplines such as learning and memory, Alzheimer's disease, hippocampus/exohippocampus research, intelligence and aging, new drug development/screening/evaluation, pharmacology, toxicology, preventive medicine, neurobiology, animal psychology and behavioral biology. It has been widely recognized in the world and is the preferred classic experiment for medical schools to conduct behavioral research, especially learning and memory research.

I firmly believe that intelligence is not unique to primates, but a widespread phenomenon. In fact, many animals that are generally recognized as having high intelligence can pass the mirror test.

Like dolphins

For example, elephants

So, if you see your cat or dog fighting with their reflection in the mirror, don't be surprised, because they don't know that it's themselves...