I continue to be baffled by research such as this:
It was once thought that only humans could pass the mark test. Then chimpanzees did, followed by dolphins and elephants.
What I continue to not understand is why they don’t think that (e.g.) cats are self aware. My cats recognize each other, so they clearly recognize cats. When they see themselves in a mirror, they don’t treat it like another cat — they basically ignore it. Is there any other explanation for this than they recognize it as themselves? What am I missing here?
According to Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal, the new findings fit with his work on capuchin monkeys who don’t quite recognize themselves in mirrors, but don’t treat the reflections as belonging to strangers. “As a result, we proposed a gradual scale of self awareness. The piece of intriguing information presented here may support this view,” he said.
However, de Waal cautioned that “many scientists would want more tests and more controls” — a warning especially salient in light of a high-profile controversy involving Marc Hauser, a Harvard University evolutionary biologist who appears to have overstated the cognitive powers of his own monkeys.
“What you’re seeing in the videos is subject to all kinds of interpretations,” said Gordon Gallup, a State University of New York at Albany psychologist who invented the mirror test, and has administered it with negative results to rhesus monkeys. “I don’t think these findings in any way demonstrate that rhesus monkeys are capable of recognizing themselves in mirrors.”
It seems to me that, for whatever reason (Homo Sapiens chauvinism?), some scientists go out of their way to deny the obvious. It reminds me of the arguments during Descartes’s day that animals couldn’t feel pain, and the even more absurd ones that babies couldn’t, either, used as an excuse to not have to use anaesthesia to operate on them.
[Update a while later]
I should add that there is no definitive test for self awareness. There is no way to know for certain that anyone other than yourself is self aware.
It is a bizzare anti-anthropomorphism. Another topic in which you can see it being animals ability to use logic and reasoning. Even my favorite philosopher tends to think that humans are distinctly different from other animals because they survive by mere instinct whereas we have to use reason. But all my experience with animals is that they also survive and prosper only to the extent they use reasoning and accumulate knowledge.
And even in non-human animals, the destructive effects of NOT thinking are very apparent. Take domestic sheep for instance – some of the dumbest animals I’ve ever seen. If they didn’t have a symbiotic relationship with humans I think they’d die out within a few generations. They can’t seem to have babies without smothering them.
As for self awareness – I am somewhat baffled that reflections of ones outward appearance is used as a gauge. As a measure of understanding reflections, sure, but the reflection in the mirror is not the ‘self’. Self-awareness is axiomatic in anything a creature does and experiences.
Sometimes I think animals actually understand proper philosophy better than humans – they don’t seem to go out of their way to lie to themselves, and focus on dealing with reality.
Which is why it makes me a little sad when I kill and eat them.
I don’t know why they are treating how an animal responds to seeing its own reflection as something so novel. Every time they go down to take a drink they see themselves reflected in the pond.
And as for mirrors – my dog seems entranced by his reflection every now and then. We have a large stand mirror that he sits in front of, looking at himself (and watching us in the background), like he’s deep in thought. We’ve taken to calling him Harry Potter while he sits there, because it reminds us so much of him and the mirror in the Sorceror’s Stone.
My dog used to watch herself in mirrors, and doesn’t seem to care anymore, but she never once acted like there was another dog in there. Similar thing with watching TV, but as a puppy she used to growl at nature shows. I’m pretty sure she gave up, having decided it was stupid. And yeah, our cats are self aware by any practical definition. Nothing with such an incredibly annoyingly strong drive to get whatever the hell they feel like they want from you in the middle of the f-ing night couldn’t be.
Animals in the zooin glass enclosures will ignore whatever is going on the other side of the glass — they’ve learned it has no connection to their lives. Similarly, a cat could be ignoring images in the mirror without recognizing that it is an image of itself. We don’t know if the cat thinks the mirror image is another cat, or just some strange worthless thing to ignore, and we certainly don’t know if the cat thinks it is seeing itself. That’s why they use the dot test. By the way, similar story for shadows of the cat — a tame house cat learns to ignore its shadow as useless but may not realize that the shadow is of the cat itself.
When they see themselves in a mirror, they don’t treat it like another cat — they basically ignore it. Is there any other explanation for this than they recognize it as themselves?
The real test is, what happens when they see another cat in the mirror?
It might well be, as Bob-1 says (or similarly, at least), that there’s something about a mirror image, perhaps a change in how depth perception works, or minor flaws in the reflection that we barely even notice, that makes it obvious to a little predator brain that that’s not “real”.
(Also, don’t forget that cats make more extensive use of sound and scent than we do!)
If, however, cats respond differently to themselves in a mirror vs. other cats in a mirror, that’s useful data, and suggests actual recognition.
The dot test might be a sufficient but not necessary test of self-awareness. I think an animal could be self-aware but find mirrors utterly incomprehensible and ultimately just ignore them as useless.
And conversely, I think an animal could learn to use a mirror to hunt (eg seeing around corners) but not be self-aware, just be a non-self-aware hunting machine. I don’t know if this has been demonstrated though.
And get this — if you buy that an animal could use a mirror to hunt but not be self-aware, then you might also come to believe that an animal could use a mirror to hunt for dots on itself without actually being self-aware — just good at hunting everywhere via a mirror, including on itself.
It seems fairly apparent to me that cats dream. Dreams seem to often be about role playing, to train the entity to react better in some potentially real situation. This implies some type of self awareness to me.
Bob-1, I disagree with your assessment of animals in a zoo ignoring the glass- I played peekaboo with a juvenile lion at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo a few years ago, and great fun was had by all. They just tune out the hairless monkeys most of the time because we’re so damn annoying.
I have played with baby tigers myself – with inches of safety glass between me and their mom of course.
I think Bob-1’s arguments, along with such anecdotes, only establish that animals are not typically insane. You know the old “doing the same thing but expecting different results” saw. That means a pretty important control to any such test is whether they’ve been exposed to mirrors before, and how long they’ve had to get used to them. If ignoring demonstrably useless things means you can’t be self aware, then count me out.
Pete, the brain could be running a simulation of reality that the dreaming cat (or person) responds to, without being self-aware.
I just played peek-a-book with my eight month old daugher in the mirror. Then I held some yellow 1/8″ striping material behind her so she could only see it in the mirror — she immediately turned and reached for it. Then I put her down, let her play, and snuck the very same yelllow striping material into her hair. When I held her up to the mirror, she could see herself with the yellow striping material, but she didn’t reach for it. Instead, she just kept making eye contact with me, looking around the room via the mirror, etc. Well, maybe she doesn’t care if she has stripes on herself, so I put it on her hand, and of course she immediately pulled it off and tried to eat it. She seems self-aware, and I think she is, but she failed the dot test.
Actually, watching her play as I type this, it occurs to me I have no evidence that she is self-aware. If anyone wants to propose any completely harmless experiments to generate evidence, I’ll try them and post the results.
When my wife and I were first married, she had an elderly Persian cat who would occasionally walk up to the reflective panel on the automatic dishwasher, look up at my reflection in it, and meow at it.
Then she would turn and look at the unreflected me to see my reaction.
I’d like to test homo sapiens trollus for sapience. The line gets pretty murky when you consider even Eliza level programming.
Rand, I really admire your pro-animal intelligence views. I do find it alarming that this strain of human supremacy (“dogs can’t love,” “cats are vapid,” etc.) continues to crop up in mainstream science. It seems to run counter to the spirit of evolution, in that it assumes a certain stasis in animal intelligence, as if living side-by-side humans for 30,000-odd years hasn’t changed how dogs think, react, and emote.
Actually, watching her play as I type this, it occurs to me I have no evidence that she is self-aware. If anyone wants to propose any completely harmless experiments to generate evidence, I’ll try them and post the results.
If I may be so bold…
I just played peek-a-book with my eight month old daugher in the mirror.
Did she recognize that you didn’t actually disappear? Did she try to mimic your activity? Did she find as much glee in playing the game as you did? If so, what caused the glee?
Nice work Bob-1. This is really hard I think. This might just be a test of geometric reasoning and attention span. Your daughter is no doubt self-aware, but not really self-interested when her dad is being fun.
Again arguing from anecdote, I can back up ak4mc’s story. Both species of pets in our house know where to look if they see something in a mirror.
Monitoring consciousness relates to the idea of a kind of sixth sense which is like the other five but refers to the perception of self mental state – self awareness.
There is presumably a feedback loop around the mental training process of dreaming that requires sensory input as to the resultant mental state – to refine the dreaming process. Noting whisker/ear twitching, etc., while sleeping, it seems to me cats express different mental states in their dreams, for example, they seem to have nightmares. Sensory input as to mental state is by definition self awareness (at whatever level). Hence, by this theory, any animal that dreams is to some extent self aware – the dreaming process requires feedback.
Another thought – neural networks measure the output and compare it against a desired output in order to optimize. Measuring the neural network output is by definition self awareness. I would have to argue that any animal with a neural network is to some extent self aware. This seems to be a question of degree/type.
@Alex – It occurs to me that checking domesticated animals, in particular, for “self-awareness” may be a bit like looking at a tachometer instead of a speedometer. What’s a more comprehensive gauge of capability of an animal’s consciousness – the dot test or its ability to imprint on human beings in general? There’s a lot of difference between, say, a domestic cat and a lynx.
I’m not too sure all human beings are self-aware (as opposed to just narcissitic) – just look at the clueless fools we have in Washington right now. 🙁
“Is there any other explanation for this than they recognize it as themselves? What am I missing here?”
Cats use their sense of smell more than we do, and learn that the cats in the reflection has no smell, so they may largely ignore it.
However, do your cats ever look directly at their own eyes in the reflection? If two cats look each other in the eyes head-on, it’s an aggressive posture. If the cat thinks its own reflection is another cat and looks into the eyes it will start hissing. If it looks into the eyes and doesn’t freak out then it recognizes the illusion. Whether it recognizes the illusion as itself is another matter.
I read about a couple that had a bear that visited their property with which they made friends. One day another bear came by that they mistook for their friend. When it attacked them, their friend came and drove off the intruder.
Sounds like love to me.
Animals think and we treat them as such. In many ways they are superior to humans. Chimps have better memory for example.
Humans are not very self aware either. We need to be humble.
Leland, I think you ask some great questions. It is usually pretty obvious why our baby cries, but how she got what sure looks like a sense of humor is sometimes much more of a mystery, and in addition to be just about the most wonderful thing I’ve ever experienced, you’re right — listening to my baby squeal with delight at some things and not others is what makes me feel as though she is developing as self-aware person. I understand there has to be survival value in laughing and looking cute, but I can’t understand why she thinks certain specific things are funny. For example, when we play games with her, she laughs and she probably originally picked up the sense that this is fun time from watching her parents laugh and smile. But when I pick her up and turn her upside down, she laughs uncontrollably, and yet, all she can see is her upside-down mother looking on with worry saying “Be careful!” Somehow she decided that she gets a kick out getting turned upside-down, even though there weren’t any cues that this is fun. She seems to just innately like it. Maybe she’ll be an astronaut.
My wife worked with neonatal babies for many years. When I heard here discuss their behavior, it was like she was describing the same manipulative behaviors seen in our teenage daughters. Her multiple observations of many infants made it clearly obvious that they have the ability to control their environment to meet their own desires.
To some extent, that can be dismissed as instinct: A baby cried because it is hungry and the crying gets the child the attention it needs to get fed. But what of the child that realizes it doesn’t want the particular nutrition offered? What about the infant that cries not because it is hungry, but simply because it wants attention/affection? Did you know you can manipulate the latter behavior as a parent, such that the child won’t cry unless it really is in need of an adult and not just desiring to be fed on its schedule or have attention?
I bet you knew you could manipulate an animals behavior in such a way. Ever noticed the animal trying to manipulate your behavior before you manipulate its?
Ever noticed the animal trying to manipulate your behavior before you manipulate its?
In one of Carl Sagan’s books he tells of visiting John Lilly’s research station and being manipulated in just this way by a dolphin. And apparently the dolphin thought it was funny when Sagan finally caught on.
The only supremacy that matters when it comes to the animal kingdom is our military supremacy.