We had a dog that, when standing in front of a mirror, barked wildly at his reflection, in contrast, the current dog does not pay attention to his image in the mirror at all until we wonder if he notices it. Is it possible that some animals notice their image in the mirror and others don't?
Looking in the mirror is such an obvious and everyday action that it is a little difficult to understand that it represents a unique ability that distinguishes us at least from the vast majority of living beings. Both in babies and in animals, the same stages of reference to the mirror can be observed. When the toddler or the animal encounters the mirror for the first time, the reflection is received simply as a stranger who suddenly appears. This is the case with fighting fish that show aggression when you put a mirror in the aquarium and this is also the behavior of your dog barking at his reflection. The second step is a physical examination of the strange figure, usually this step will include an examination behind the mirror in an attempt to find the foreigner there. In the third stage, experiments are conducted that test the relationship between the contortions or movements and the reactions of the figure in the mirror. Only in the fourth and last stage is the recognition of the figure as a reflection of the body evident in babies and chimpanzees.
Bialik, in the story "Sfih" gives a poetic description of a child's struggle with a mirror puzzle whose solution marks the end of infancy "Of all the household items, the old mirror, the one that hangs above the bearing, attracted my heart the most. To me, she is the greatest of the mysteries of my world, every time I stand up on the counter against her, I see inside her again a room and tools, myself and the closet opposite... Where did all these come into the mirror? I jumped and climbed onto the bearing and screwed myself against the mirror - yes, yes! A second Shmuel'ik is standing right in front of me and his snout touches mine. I flinched back a little - and he flinched too. "Hai-hai-hai" I play - and he plays too, but without "hai-hai-hai", whose voice is not heard. It's puzzling, and I'm a little afraid.. Behind the mirror, there must be some kind of lunatic or "pest" who has disappeared and he's the one doing all these magic tricks. "To peek there or not to peek?..."
Chimpanzees recognize themselves in the mirror
Since G. Gallup discovered in 1970 that chimpanzees recognize themselves in the mirror, this cosmetic item has become a particularly fruitful field of research. Self-recognition in a mirror is a standard test: the animal is anesthetized and marked with a paint stain and then shown a mirror. Only a small group of great minds: the chimpanzee, the orangutan, the Indian elephant and the dolphins will try to clean themselves of the stain according to the reflection. Other animals including dogs, cats and parrots fail this test. There are those who extend this ability to other animals, but a critical examination raises the suspicion that this is not self-recognition but simply training: the animal is rewarded when it uses the mirror as a tool. New and controversial research Argues that I cleaned Eilat, a fish that makes a living by gnawing dead skin and collecting parasites from the skin of other fish. The researchers specifically chose a banker thanks to his high learning abilities and his ability to detect changes in the skin tone of his "clients". The researchers report that most of the Nekas managed to pass the self-identification test. The fish not only reached the third stage of "dancing" in front of the mirror, with each fish adopting its own dance style, but also tried to rub themselves and scratch spots that they could only see in the reflection from it.
With chimpanzees it is possible to notice after the initial exposure that they treat the figure in the mirror as a new monkey in the room in a "playful" stage in which the chimpanzee conducts a kind of experiments and moves his body in front of the mirror and in the third, unique stage, as mentioned for a very small number of species, he examines hidden parts of his body using the mirror: he looks into his mouth, examines the reflection of the genitals and anus and uses a mirror to clean secretions from the corner of the eye.
And the babies?
The reason for failing the test is not related to the ability to see or process the image in the brain, there are also those who fail who are perfectly capable of using mirror reflections to find food. Getting to know the character in the mirror is so important because it marks a crucial developmental stage in the creation of the "I" in children. Until the age of one and a half to two years, the child learns a lot: he gets to know his body and the physical and human environment, but only at this age is self-identity formed, which is expressed, among other things, in the child's recognition of his image in the mirror. Another task related to the acquisition of this identity is the use of pronouns such as "I" "you" instead of personal names, mother, father, etc. In order for "I want chocolate" to replace "Danny wants chocolate" the child's understanding of himself "from the outside" is required, just as the mirror presents him as he is to an outside observer. The child is required to understand that "Danny" is his "I" just as a mother is "I" for herself. This self will accompany the child of that age throughout his life and accordingly "I" will be the word he will use more than any other word in the dictionary. It is precisely this centrality of the self that makes it transparent: it is difficult for us to understand that in other creatures learning, emotion, memory and other intellectual characteristics are possible without necessarily being accompanied by an "I".
Dogs, as pack animals, are very similar to us in their emotional and social life. It is easy for us to understand and identify expressions of canine emotion: from joy and playfulness to anger and sadness, and this similarity makes it difficult for us to notice the great difference in the way we perceive ourselves and the world. A dog does not have a fixed "I" while he can observe from the outside, dogs are indifferent to other dogs' expressions of suffering not because they are selfish and cold animals but because they lack the ability to put themselves in the other dog's place (empathy). Such an ability, to imagine yourself in other times or in different situations, probably requires a permanent self-identity related to the ability to recognize oneself from the outside (through a mirror).
The dogs realize that there really isn't another dog and lose interest
The fighting fish remain in the first stage, so they can be made to spread their fins as long as there is a mirror in the tank. Dogs, cats and other animals lose interest in the sight after the detective's attempts (the second stage) reveal that there is no threatening animal, so it is better to ignore the stimulus. There are, as mentioned, animals that progress further in the stages of self-awareness, but the meaning of these observations is subject to serious controversy. Some argue that dogs cannot be deprived of their "self" due to their failure in the mirror test. We may be falling into a logical trap of identifying intellectual ability with quasi-human behavior. Dogs recognize their friends and rivals not only and not even mainly by sight but by the sense of smell.
A fair examination of the self-recognition ability of dogs would be a "smell mirror" experiment. in such an experiment When we examined the degree of interest shown by dogs in urine scents, it became clear that maximum nose attention was achieved when the dog sniffed his own urine with a scented additive (the equivalent of a paint stain on the forehead in the mirror experiment). The dog, it turns out, shows an interest in the changes in the smell of his own urine and distinguishes it from the smell of the marks left by other dogs and between pure own urine and one that has been changed. Another problem with mirror experiments is that in order to explore the character, that is, to progress beyond the second stage, it is necessary to stare at it with a searching gaze, there are animals such as the gorilla for whom such a gaze is an aggressive gesture and perhaps this is what fails them.
Other researchers who are jealous of the man being allowed on the animal claim that using a mirror for cleaning does not necessarily indicate self-awareness in animals. If an animal can use a mirror to find food, perhaps it is able to process the information given by the views also for grooming purposes without recognizing the figure with an "I" similar to ours. Self-recognition in the mirror is an achievement that we all achieve at a young age and maintain throughout our lives. In chimpanzees, only about 75% succeed in the task and only about half of them retain this ability in adulthood. As mentioned, the "I" is important for creating social relationships because it allows us to see ourselves through the eyes of others in the group and to understand their feelings and motives. That is why it is strange to find in the group of successful people in the test that shows the shy and solitary orangutan and equally strange is the failure of the social gorilla.
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More of the topic in Hayadan:
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It is not entirely clear how we infer from behavioral observation about thoughts and especially about their absence. The lack of empathy and the lack of ability to see oneself in the eyes of others, etc.
It seems that the claim for the lack of ability to see oneself in the eyes of others requires a more careful examination of the method of measurement or, alternatively, of the theory regarding the mechanism of social relationships of social animals that we claim do not have this ability
It is not entirely clear how we infer from behavioral observation about thoughts and especially about their absence. The lack of empathy and the lack of ability to see oneself in the eyes of others, etc.
It seems that the claim for the lack of ability to see oneself in the eyes of others requires a more careful examination of the method of measurement or, alternatively, of the theory regarding the mechanism of social relationships of social animals that we claim do not have this ability
I'm not sure that the test necessarily indicates intelligence. My dog looks at her reflection in the window. And our cat from all of the Pacifex chose to topple a Swarovski cat figurine.
In a hospital during an incoming visit a cat approached a statue of a cat that was there and interested in it.
In short, they have something there in the cerebellum as well.
You lost me when you wrote that parrots fail the test, which is definitely not true, your teachers are not updated enough, too bad