This has probably been covered here, but why won’t my dog look at herself in the mirror? I’ve seen films of cats seeing themselves in mirrors. Don’t dogs see themselves? Or is it just my dog?
Some dogs do, but most that I’ve observed don’t. I don’t know what’s operating, but I’ve always had a feeling that whatever governs a pooch’s perception of mirrored reflections is related to the way only a few of them seem to respond to television.
Perhaps the 2D representation of a 3D world just doesn’t register with most of them. A mirror, of course, is a little closer to 3D than a television.
Of my two dogs, one is not interested in mirrors or television, and the other one watches television and tries to kill his evil twin in the mirror.
They’re physically able to see their own image, and each dog seems to react differently. I’ve theorized that it may depend on the intelligence of each individual dog.
Some dogs seem to catch on to mirrors better than others. My dog looked in the mirror, looked around the back of it, determined that it was not another dog, and promptly lost interest. She apparently had a vague understanding that it was her own image, but wasn’t terribly interested in it.
My grandmother’s dog, however, (who was one of the stupidest creatures ever to walk the face of the earth) was completly convinced that the dog on the other side of the glass wanted to play. After cracking his head into the mirror a few times, he decided the Other Dog was mean, and began growling menacingly whenever he saw his own reflection. He even tried to bite the Other Dog, leaving saliva smeared all over the mirror. Since he wouldn’t stop, grandma had to remove all mirrors from his sight. He never caught on that it was his own image.
We make the assumption that a mirror should be something of interest to dogs, probably because * we’re* so interested in them. Really, why would dogs care about their reflections, anyway? Unlike we vain humans, they don’t much care if their hair is mussed.
As far as I know, chimps and dolphins are the only animals to truly appreciate mirrors. Chimps demonstrate quite clearly that they understand the concept. Often, they use them to examine parts of their bodies not usually visible to them (such as the insides of their mouths.)
Lissa I saw the site you used. Here is another that says that elephants also recognize their own images. That would be in a BIG MIRROR!
Does anyone want to do research on this subject involving whales? 
My dog “talks” to her reflection!
My father’s dog used to bark at his own reflection in the water bowl.
Dad had to get a black bowl to eliminate the reflection.
The dog was afraid of the black bowl and wouldn’t drink from it.
I imagine most dogs don’t respond to their reflection because vision is, relatively, one of their least involved senses–most of the processing power in their noggin is all in their nose and ears.
Now, if mirrors reflected their scent back at them (I’ve no idea how that would work, no), I bet you’d see most dogs driven nuts by the things.
My dog has ignored his reflection in the mirror since his first encounter; that time, he gave his reflection a few sniffs, figured if it didn’t smell it wasn’t real, and lost interest.
However, he’s an avid TV watcher, especially if an animal is onscreen. (He’s a big fan of westerns, what with all those horses galloping around.) Since he also spends time watching the activity on the street through the window, I suspect that he thinks the TV is some sort of Magic Window.
I saw a show last week that had a long segment on keas. These birds seem to be very smart (as well as being something of a nuisance). In one of the experiments they ran, they decided that keas recognized themselves in mirrors too.
Maybe other parrots do as well?
When I first got my current dog, he was fascinated with his image in the mirror, but after a few days he got over it. I think he figured out that it was not another dog and therefore not so interesting after all.
I have a friend whose oldest female pooch loves to look at herself in the mirror - she’ll pose and look at herself for a long time! She seems quite intelligent, so maybe she does know that’s her in the mirror - my friend even got her a full-length one so she could admire herself whenever she wanted to, but then when she got a new younger male, he thought his image was another dog, and he wanted to attack it, so they had to cover it up.
I remember my dog’s first encounter with a mirror. He was about 4 mos old and he was looking at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. When I turned around to look at him directly it scared the crap out of him. I don’t know what he was thinking, but he certainly didn’t understand what was going on.
For about a month he would growl at his reflection in the dishwasher, but that didn’t last too long.
I think my dog understands the reflection part - we have a closet with a large mirror at the foot of the stairs in our house, and the dog often lies down at the foot of the stairs. When one of us goes up or down, he’ll quite often watch us in the mirror. When we brought my kitten over last year, she hid behind a box infront of the mirror, and the dog watched her over the box, and followed her by looking at her reflection. There is no way he could have seen her directly from where he was. It was quite cute, actually. He also watches TV, though his sister (my cousin’s dog) is more a TV watcher…she likes to watch Matlock reruns and once or twice has growled at the TV at the character that ends up being the bad guy.
The cats seem to have little interest in either, except the kitten who chases things in the TV. I think they understand the reflection, since they behave similarly to the dog in watching us move that way.
Does age or breed have anything to do with it.
Rommel was an adult German Short-Haired Pointer when I stood a good-sized mirror on the carpet and invited him to take a look. He looked, seemed to have been a little startled, and then walked behind the mirror. No dog there. He immediately lost interest.
Ever see a dog do a double take?
Before Rommel came along his father, Mocha lived next door and we developed up a strong friendship. I’d hit a tennis ball with a half wedge, and Mocha’d fetch and fetch. Every so often he’d take the ball and go across the street to a little swamp for a drink of water. (Don’t get excited, he’d beeen drinking there for years.) I followeed him one day and saw that he’d drop the ball in the water where it woud float, and after drinking his fill, he’d retrieve the ball and back he’d come.
One day (maybe a summer or two afterwards), instead of a tennis ball, I had a stupid solid ball of some kind. I’d roll it, so he wouldn’t try to catch it on the fly and hurt himself.
Comes time for a drink.
I don’t know why but I followed him. He gets into the “pond” flicks the ball to his right and in one motion starts to lower his head for those first few swigs. BUT THE BALL SINKS!!! Mocha flashes his head back to stare at the water where the ball should have been but wasn’t. He looks at me as if to say “WTF?!!” And back to the water.
It was hilarious. I had never seen such unabashed surprise in a dog.
Of course he just ducked his face beneath the surface and got it back.
My dog, a Jack Russell Terrier, sometimes seems smart and sometimes not. She knows a lot less words than our former dog. But when we go for walks she knows not to go on the other side of a tree, post, or sign because of the leash. She will come back around on our side.
She will not waste any time at all playing fetch the ball or anything. No fetching at all. Ever.
She will come to the back door of the porch, which we can see through the sliding glass doors. We will motion–go around! She’ll run around to the front of the house. Our other dog would have never done that.
But she has no idea that the invisible fence doesn’t work if she doesn’t have the collar on. Sometimes we forget the collar but she doesn’t cross the line.
Since I’m dogless, can someone try this experiment for me? Lay a mirror flat on the floor and see what your pooch makes of this hole in the floor with a dog looking out.
My dog, Griff, is a Welsh Terrier and has had absolutely no interest in his reflection.
He’s supposedly rather smart, but I question his intelligence on many levels, so who knows? I have a feeling the lack of scent has a lot to do with it, even though he does bark at other dogs and animals on television.
When one of dogs was a puppy, she was fascinated by mirrors for a couple of weeks. I think she understood that the reflected image was indeed hers, and afterwards she didn’t bother. Dogs have no sense of vanity like humans, so there’s really no need to look in a mirror.
I wonder about some dogs and television. Mine will glance at it every so often, and one will watch a little bit longer longer than the other. I don’t think they’re fascinated by it because they know it’s not real; they can’t really play with the teeny tiny odorless dog in the box on the other side of the glass.
For many years, my cat, Clapton, hated the kitty in the mirror.
And tried to kill him.
Only in his old age has he realized that it isn’t real.
My dog, a german shephard/huskie mix, isn’t much interested in her reflection in the mirror but does watch her humans in them. When doing things like combing my hair in the morning, she’s looking right into my eyes as if to say, “Hey, grooming your fur is hardly important when walkies are about to happen!”
JOhn.