Mirror Test
Can you pass the mirror test?
The test gauges self-awareness by determining whether an animal can recognize its own reflection in a mirror as an image of itself.
Animals which have passed the mirror test are Common Chimpanzees, Bonobos, orangutans, dolphins, pigeons and humans. Surprisingly, gorillas have not passed the test, although at least one specific gorilla, Koko, has passed the test; this is probably because gorillas consider eye contact an aggressive gesture and normally try to avoid looking each other in the face.
Human children tend to fail this test until they are at least 1.5 to 2 years old . Dogs and 1 year old children, for example, usually react to a mirror in fear or curiosity, or simply ignore it, while birds often attack their own reflections.
While this test has been extensively conducted on primates, there is also debate as to the value of the test as applied to animals who rely primarily on senses other than vision, such as dogs.
Supposedly, a good way to test the self-awareness of your two-year old.
The test gauges self-awareness by determining whether an animal can recognize its own reflection in a mirror as an image of itself.
Animals which have passed the mirror test are Common Chimpanzees, Bonobos, orangutans, dolphins, pigeons and humans. Surprisingly, gorillas have not passed the test, although at least one specific gorilla, Koko, has passed the test; this is probably because gorillas consider eye contact an aggressive gesture and normally try to avoid looking each other in the face.
Human children tend to fail this test until they are at least 1.5 to 2 years old . Dogs and 1 year old children, for example, usually react to a mirror in fear or curiosity, or simply ignore it, while birds often attack their own reflections.
While this test has been extensively conducted on primates, there is also debate as to the value of the test as applied to animals who rely primarily on senses other than vision, such as dogs.
Supposedly, a good way to test the self-awareness of your two-year old.
posted by Engels at 3:05 pm
5 Comments:
Ha, noice.
Recently child psychologists perform an experiment where they threw young kids in a playroom with play-things such as slides. Then they threw them in a scaled down version of the room. Even though it was physically impractical for the kids to slide down the miniature slide, they didn't seem to notice the size change of the room.
Didn't Dale once fail a test very similar to this?
Something like a coin on the forehead?
Though I think he was talking to Emily McLay at the time...
Haha. When you say 'talking', do you mean in person, or via ICQ?
I'm not sure he ever spoke to her in person.
My mother had a little yappy dog of the kind favoured by mothers. It would sit on the foot of her bed staring quizzically at itself in the dressing-table mirror. After a while it would run into the loungeroom and look for itself. It would repeat this a few times until it got the shits and attack the mirror. Mum took this as a sign of intelligence.
There are no Nobel prize winners in my family tree.
Haha, not the smartest of dogs. Must be the small brain.
There was a Russian academic at my old uni. Apparently he had two Nobel prize winners in his family. Bloody Russians.
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