Do Animals Understand Mirrors?
June 19th 2008 21:00
Photo supplied by Marrabbio2. Used in accordance with the terms of Wikimedia Commons’ GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
I’ve always wondered if animals can understand how mirrors work or photos of themselves. The most frustrating part of this is that unless I ever reincarnate as an animal, I will never know. I remember showing Butterscotch photos of himself. Butterscotch wasn’t interested.
At my neighbour’s, I liked to pick up Higgins and Miggins and hold them up to my neighbour’s full-length mirror. Like Butterscotch, neither Higgins nor Miggins gave any reaction to their reflection. I wonder if they knew they were looking at themselves. They are such handsome black cats. Sometimes my neighbour would say to them, “If I was a lady cat, I’d f*ck you.” I feel the same way.
I could go on all day wondering about this. Similar unanswerable questions would include: Do animals have souls? Do animals know the difference from right and wrong? Do animals have ghosts? Do animals go to heaven? Can animals understand the difference between 2D and 3D? (Some of these questions come from a book called The Souls of Animals by Gary Kowalski.)
But then again, I remember watching In Search of… one day when I was a child. They did a story about a male Siamese fighting fish. Isolated from other fish, the fish was calm until someone placed a mirror in front of the tank. The fish then kept trying to fight his own reflection. You’d think he would realise he was achieving nothing except for banging his face against a glass tank but no, he kept going. Talk about an exercise in futility but I guess that answers one of my questions.
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Comment by Kleonaptra
Kalikapsychosis
When it comes to mirrors, its individual. I know plenty of stallions who have been scarred for life because they saw their own reflection and attacked themselves - Just imagine the thought! "Gee, he looks tough! Where the hell did he come from! He looks just like that hot stud my ladies are always talking about! Gotta take him out!" And parrots never learn - windows, mirrors, they smack em every time.
My mynah bird has it all worked out though. She talks to herself, but she knows its a hard surface not another bird, I think she actually knows she's kidding herself. Once, on my boyfriends big screen computer, we put up a you tube vid of some mynahs talking and blew it up. She tried to chat to them, then looked behind the screen. Seeing nothing she had a go at me - "Oi! You tricked me!"
And cats have been known to play with mirrors, I think they get confused the first time, but after that realize theres no scent. Most animals dont rely on their eyes like humans do.
Comment by Queenie
Quirky Folk
Quirky Queenie
Thanks for sharing your stories. That's very interesting to know.