What Do Animals See in a Mirror?
nautil.us
nautil.us
Take a hypothetical example, say we were presented with a non-visual smell mirror, would we pay it any attention, let alone recognize or identify ourselves in it ? Highly unlikely, on the other hand an animal like scent-hound might find such a thing interesting.
It's a gimmick they used in the early 50's, adding associated smells to movies. I'm not sure about on-the-fly smell creation though.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test#Animals_with_a_non-...
1: Determine if the subject is capable of detecting the modification 2: Determine if the subject has detected the modification 3: Have the subject acknowledge that they are the subject of the modification by attempting to correct it.
I guess hearing a crow clear his throat would be an indication of sentience.
You first do the mirror test with many animals that do primarily use vision. Then you rank those using a different test - if you pick your alternate test properly it can act as a proxy to the mirror test.
Then you test your target animal to see how it does on the proxy test.
An elephant passes the mirror test. An elephant can be trained to brush it's own teeth. Over time, a well-trained elephant develops an understanding that the habit of dental care is beneficial and rewarding, and teaches other elephants to do the same.
Thus, we might conclude that all tooth brushing elephants are sentient, self-aware beings.
This would mean that some of the possible pre-requisites for intelligent life are now either eyes OR teeth...
Now, to extend beyond elephants, we'd need to find another behavior, trait or defining aspect that elephants can share with another species that humans cannot. Thus if elephants must be the bridge-species to self-aware-intellect without natural eyes, they must carry three intelligence defining attributes.
1. Eyes, to relate to humans, enabling primary confirmation
2. Teeth, as a shared attribute, for secondary confirmation, especially in elephants stricken blind by randomized misfortune
3. Other: something that does not relate to humans, but can confirm intellect
This means that elephants can see themselves in the mirror, so humans can know that elephants are fellows in individualized personal experience.
A sighted elephant might manage to teach a blind elephant to brush it's own teeth, thus, elephants that fail the mirror test can still be confirmed as intelligent, if they can carry the capacity to brush their own teeth.
Elephants can be encouraged to brush their own teeth, and hypothetically devise opportunities to teach other creatures to do the same, if they recognize that the other creatures have teeth, but no eyes. Emphasis on the HYPOTHETICALLY, since this is a thought experiment.
Elephants, furthermore, can reach beyond the normal capacity for humans to recognize intelligence, in that they can operate their trunks in a manner that confirms intelligence in other creatures with trunk-like appendages, such as ant-eaters, snakes, octopuses, squids, worms and even certain, very long slugs.
Now, given that elephants act as the bridge species to these other creatures, could we extend beyond elephants, and use elephants to confirm intellect in these other creatures that can confirm intellect in creatures humans and elephants, otherwise, cannot?
Does this hold hypothetical water? Possibly, but man, does it ever feel like a long shot. It's like the Monty Python test for a witch.
How about insects? For example, what if we start with bees as a likely candidate? How do we confirm self-awareness in bees? Could we extend this logic from bees, and beyond, over to another type of insect, through a recognition of mutual traits shared with bees?
We are testing theory of mind after all - so perhaps choose a test that speaks to that instead of teeth?
Would we be capable of defining a reliable test for a spontaneously self-aware wisp of cigarette smoke? How intelligent would it need to be, before we notice it? Would it need to start organizing it's shape in front of a mirror?
What about a not-so-spontaneously-arranged swarm of self-aware nanites, which, from certain distance, for all intents and purposes, might bear a striking resemblance to a dust mote?
Divide an almost identical uniform background with a piece of glass, block smell and sound if possible. Put two cats on the opposite sides of the glass and observe their reactions. Put mirror in the place of glass and observe reactions. I can bet the reactions would be drastically different, and not just for cats.
And FWIW, I've observed this behavior on old 30hz CRTs as well as modern 240hz LCDs and various things in between.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxW_qPU4KVQ
This one is interesting because the cat tries to reach underneath the tablet to get the mouse, which to me implies that it perceives it as an object rather than just showing a "swat at any movement" reflex.
I think that cats have a pretty decent idea of what is and isn't real. While a reflection may be interesting in that it looks like another cat, it lacks the accompanying sound and smell of an intruder and is therefore safe to ignore.
On a related note, many years ago my family lived in a house with a lot of bird life in the back yard. There was a family of magpies, a number of chickens and a solitary male guineafowl. While moving in we leaned an old mirror against a fence in the yard and it ended up staying there for years.
Initially, the magpies attempted to fight their reflections but they quickly learned that there was no point. After that they ignored the mirror. The chickens never seemed to notice it in the first place. The guineafowl, though, was most interesting. This is a species that forms flocks in the wild. This particular guineafowl, though, had been separated from its flock for years and was completely alone. To begin with it had the same reaction as the magpies and attempted to fight itself in the mirror. Over time, however, this behavior stopped. Instead of fighting, it would simply stand in front of the mirror for hours on end.
I'm pretty confused by this. I don't think that her sense of smell or hearing is so acute that she can smell or hear the other cat through glass from so far away. She doesn't have binocular vision at that distance, I would assume. Parallax? How does she determine that that's a real cat while cats in mirrors and screens aren't?
My cat will react to unusual movement outside a nearby window even when he's curled up with his eyes closed. I remember one instance in particular where I was playing music fairly loudly. He had his eyes closed and was lying down facing away from the window when a dog walked past. His ears perked up and he immediately got up and looked around. I can only assume it was the sound that tipped him off.
It's not necessarily that their hearing/smell/vision is so much better than ours, but rather that it's more specifically evolved for their role as predators (as another poster pointed out).
"I'm so alone..."
I never saw her first experience with a mirror though and have no specific indication that she recognizes herself but she is very skittish around other cats and has no negative reaction when around said large mirror, so if she notices the image of herself at all in the mirror she must associate it in a very different way than she does other cats.
When she sees me in the mirror she jumps up onto the bed for pats
So, what's going on here? My dog would go crazy if another dog was anywhere within view, but nothing happened. Did my dog just understand without doubt that's a reflection, that dog is me, that human is you, there's no point in even looking at it for a second? Or did my dog just recognize it as a 2D surface, and think anything in the mirror doesn't exist, it's just a bunch of shapes moving around. Kind of like holding out a printed photo of a dog, where it would just see a blob of color on the paper, recognize there's no dog here, nothing physically present, no depth, no smell, no noise, etc.
My other cat clear recognizes itself in the mirror because whenever I force it to look at itself in the mirror, it strains to look away from its disgusting recognition that it is a cat and not a human. I'm serious about how it reacts, though it's only my interpretation as to why it acts that way.
Have you done the same thing with a piece of cardboard instead of a mirror? Your cat may be hearing you pull out the treat.
ultimately, every social network (hn included now) devolves to discussing cats. Humans make such good pets.
With human subjects, we have other ways to gauge theory of mind.
Take the statement, "For example, compared to controls, schizophrenic individuals were less likely to understand a request hidden in a husband’s statement to his wife, 'I want to wear that blue shirt, but it’s very creased.'
Perform these alternate types of tests on subjects in a FMRI machine. Conceivably with enough subjects, it may be possible to discern distinct sections of the brain responding to these questions.
Then test the subjects with the mirror test. Place a spot on the nose, or eyebrow, etc.
The first thing to check is if, indeed, the same areas of the brain respond in the mirror test as in the other non-visual tests. If so, this is an excellent indicator that the mirror test is actually showing what researchers have believed it to show.
The next step would be that if the mirror test proves to be accurate, hook up chimpanzee subjects in a FMRI and perform the mirror tests. See if associated sections of their brains respond as ours do. Further, test this against various great apes. If all of us have passed the standard mirror test, I would hypothesize all great apes will have similar responses.
Things to check for in subjects (human and ape): Mental disease. As is mentioned in the article, patients with schizophrenia would not be good test subjects. Try to make sure the apes aren't diseased in a similar way.
I have never seen it play a joke on another dog or a human. It will tease others, but not play jokes.
I have never seen it exhibit anything similar to a laugh. It will wag its tail in happiness, but never respond to a situation or event with anything that would be construed as a laugh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter_in_animals#Dogs
(I own a pretty happy dog myself but I'm not sure if I believe that dogs laugh.)
So the question of "Does the chimp see a reflection as another chimp or a chimp on this side of the mirror?" is the fundamental question. A two chimp experiment might resolve that question, which is can the Chimp distinguish between a visual of a chimp and the actual chimp when both are present.
Doesn't your comment apply to any insight which humans discover about animals since we must necessarily express it in terms we understand?
You are absolutely right that we can not avoid completely to fall into this fallacy. But we can try to mimize its effect by not asking "A or not A?" but instead ask "What is that?" and "How to describe that?".
They do this experiment with human babies: At a certain stage, if you put something on their head they will recognize that it doesn't belong there, because they recognize that something is "different" about the human appearance in the mirror.
But what would an ape do? Or a dolphin?
Chameleons get very upset when they see another chameleon in their space who refuses to back down no matter how threateningly they may posture.
Ascribing intelligence and self-awareness only to those species that share specific superficial traits with us is the kind of thinking that allowed us to think one sex is inferior than the other, or that one race is inferior than the other.
But while all intellects start from the same place (nothing), they are not all necessarily going in the same direction. A monkey is not a less evolved human and a cat is not a less evolved mammal.
Many animals have abilities, including intellectual, that we can't match (and some we can only crudely replicate with tools). Species have the traits they needed in nature to survive and be efficient. So those that didn't need the circuitry for dealing with mirrors, simply didn't evolve that ability.
You can't prove self awareness or disprove it. Even science has limits. Hell, I can't even prove anyone except me is self-aware. But I don't have the arrogance to claim everyone but me will be presumed not self-aware until proven otherwise.
So as a species, it'd be best for humans not to cast the animal kingdom as not self-aware "until they prove otherwise" (in silly arbitrary tests).
Humans can be arrogant in their assumptions about animals.
“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.” - Douglas Adams, hitchhikers
If something doesn't show evidence of self-awareness it doesn't prove it isn't. It just proves it don't show up how you'd expect. Maybe it is self-aware but in a different way.