What Do Animals See in a Mirror? (2014)
nautil.us
nautil.us
I have cared a lot of cats, and I didnt knew about all that experiences, but I did a lot about this with my pets. I put a mirror in front of the cat, and watched the reactions. The pattern is 90% the same:
1) The cat looks surprised. Depending of the the natural character of the cat, he will watch the reflex or get "armed" to fight. Cleary he think its another stranger cat.
2) The cat then try "feel" the reflex, touching sometimes, smelling other times, and ever trying look behind the mirror
3) Finally, the cat probably detects the reflex is not a threat and lose the interest
I really dont know if has some part of "self awareness", but probably the cat lose the interest really far before any of this level of perception
Other point is, the cat trust more in the sense of smell and hearing than the sense of view. Only one image is not enough to "identify" a target.
My experience with cats is that they are definitely intelligent, in general, and are aware of a lot of things, but they generally just don't care.
One VERY unique kitten that I had, whenever he approached a mirror, or a glass door or window, would stand up on his hind legs and rapidly rub or "massage" the glass with both his front paws, like a puppy, as if trying to climb it or roll it open.
Sadly I never captured the act on camera and he died an unfairly early death that I took a long time to recover from.
In brazilian portuguese, the word "raise" (in the context of raising kids, pets, etc.) translates to "criar"; while "create" also translates to "criar".
One of our cats does the same thing with her paws, mostly on our (glass) storm door or on mirrors. She'll also do it on opaque doors when they're closed and she wants to go in the room they're blocking. Like you mentioned, maybe that behavior indicates a desire to go to the place they're pawing at.
The point is, most cats are sooo unique in personality, I think mirror only cannot give any sure about this. Without take in consideration personality and the response from another senses its hard get any reliable conclusion.
As an example, if I get food out in the kitchen while it is watching in the mirror, it comes running to check it out. Non food things - just keeps on watching.
Whether or not they know it's their own reflection I can't tell. It certainly seems like they thought it might be another cat. Perhaps they either determined there was no cat, or determined that is was just their own reflection. Either way, they don't seem to care much.
1) Be interested enough in the reflection to watch it long enough to see the spot
2) Be observant enough to notice the spot
3) Be curious enough to care about the spot
4) Understand that the animal in the mirror is itself
5) Collapse the logical chain that: (a) if the animal in the mirror has a spot, and (b) the animal in the mirror is itself, then therefore (c) it has a spot.
6) Think to use the mirror as a tool for investigation.
An animal could plausibly get (4) without getting enough of the other steps to actually start investigating. To me, (5) seems like the most difficult leap of intelligence of all of these, and it doesn't really have to do with self-awareness-- it's more about complex inference and logical reasoning. (6) also suggests that the capability for tool use might be a prerequisite.
Most cat owners understand (including other posters in this thread) that cats know the difference between their own reflection and another real cat seen through a window. Disinterest is one explanation (though that doesn't happen with actual cats in a window), but I don't think cats' failure in the "spot" experiment is enough to exclude that they are indeed capable of (4).
On top of that, I don't think this experiment says anything at all about the nature or presence of "consciousness".
Also, it isn't the same with all cats I've known. Some seem to be more clueless than others.
Why isn't it enough time to decide whether the reflection is harmless? Not my area of expertise, but I'd expect humans to be able to parse a face or a even posture for signs of imminent aggression in that time easily. Many other animals should be able to do the same.
I'd say we are highly optimized for this, since the biggest threat to humans have been other humans for most of history, and quick judgement can literally decide who lives and who dies.
That is, if the cat doesnt recognize itself rather quickly
(In my experience they're pretty clearly different).
Take dogs for example: their sense of smell is much much more primary than their sense of sight. So while they may fail a mirror test, they may be more adept at self-identification by scent.
Edit: found an article about it from NPR http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/03/03/134167145/i-...
At a young age we might not recognize ourselves, but anymore, especially with social media, we're constantly surrounded by pictures of ourselves in different situations (or even something as simple as profile pictures on nearly any website). A young child probably isn't using these but I wonder if constantly seeing oneself in images all the time reduces the proof that this is a form a 'higher' thinking as suggested in the introduction of this article and more of a learned thing due to the immersion with this.
It's not a mirror per se so it's not a live look at you, but nonetheless it's still you that you're seeing.