Budgies seem to love playing with themselves in the mirror, dogs seem to bark at themselves like they are the enemy.
Why cant animals recongise their own reflections as them, like humans can?
Watching a budgie play with himself in a mirror gives us humans a warm fuzzy feeling because its so darn cute. I think thats why its there.
Some animals can. Experiments with chimpanzees clearly show that they understand that the reflection represents them, and they react to it accordingly. Some experiments indicate dolphins are similarly self-aware, but the results of these are less than perfectly clear. There was a documentary on PBS some time back called “The Monkey in the Mirror” (maybe a Nova episode), which covereed the chimp experiments in some depth.
Not mine.
When he first saw a mirror, he was startled, but then again, so would anyone who had never seen or heard of a mirror.
Now he walks by it without a glance. So does my other dog.
maybe its an intelligence thing then?
Dogs and cats and maybe most of the ‘lower’ animals depend quite a bit on smell - the image doesn’t.
There are very few mirrors in nature and very few instances where such a skill would be useful. For most animals, it probably just wasn’t a trait that was selected for.
My cats are apparently learners. When Tank was a kitten, she would look nonchalantly at the full length mirror and, while looking elsewhere, reach around the back of the mirror to find the cat on the other side. This would push the mirror into her face (attacking her) and she’d start over. Jake, our younger, will use the mirror to see around corners. He’s a smart one.
The dog never thought the mirror was anything special.
Scientists do use this as one test for intelligence, don’t they? Kids of a certain age don’t recognize themselves, IIRC.
Uhhhhhhh, WTF is a budgie?
A budgie. Also called a parakeet. I had one once. They can learn to say a few words and short phrases; I had one once that learned to say “Good bird!”.
Same here. The only time my dog barked at the mirror thinking it was another dog was when he had a fever, which is a good indication that he is well aware of his reflection in the mirror.
I’d say most dogs recognize the nature of a reflection. Otherwise, it’d be common wisdom that you can’t have a full-length mirror if you have a dog, and that simply isn’t the case. For that matter, wild dogs would be uncomfortable with reflection of themselves while drinking from a still pool (i.e. they wouldn’t think there was a dog in the water, but they’d think there was an unfamiliar dog around, perhaps behind them - a reflection may be him, but it isn’t a dog he’s made friends with)
Two of our cats and our dog just ignore mirrors. The lizard got upset and ran back and forth as if unsure what to do about that other lizard behind the glass (we blocked the mirror within an hour, since it upset her so). However, our 9 month old kitten, after a period of intense curiosity and experimentation, seems to have figured it out. He’ll look at himself, and he makes eye contact with me when we’re both looking in the mirror.
My sister once had a cat who was stone deaf. She (the cat, not my sister) would sit in front of a mirror and take note of what was in the reflection so she couldn’t be sneaked up on. She definitely understood that the mirror showed real stuff that was in back of her.
I own a pocket parrot (grey-cheecked parakeet) and he is reflection aware. He always ignores his reflection whereas a real bird in the room would drive him nuts.
My dog will make eye contact with me through the mirror. If I call him and he can’t see me directly, he’ll look via the mirror, I think it suggests he has some understanding of what’s going on, but maybe not full understanding.
I think being able to recognise yourself in a mirror is called being “self aware”. For a long time, humans thought they were the only ones, but apparently we’re not.
Putting an animal in front of a mirror is the test. It kinda tests to see if the animal recognises itself as an actual individual and realises that it’s looking at itself.
Cheers,
Engine
Here’s a bit more detail about “self-awareness” experiments - quite a clever method: (from here)