The mirror test

Until now, we believed that recognizing ourselves in front of a mirror was a faculty that only human beings had. This is known as “mirror stage”, a concept coined by Jaques Lacan and which refers to a phenomenon that occurs between six and eighteen months. However, is it possible that animals can also recognize themselves in a mirror? If not, why doesn’t this happen? To answer these questions, we must talk about the mirror test.

The mirror test was designed by Gordon G. Gallup Jr. that, as the article points out Animal self-awareness: studies on conditional self-discrimination in various specieswas one of the “researchers who has most studied the behavior of animals in front of the mirror” in 1970. What he intended was to discover which animal species were capable or not of recognizing their reflection.

How was the mirror test performed?

The mirror test was carried out, first, with chimpanzees. What Gordon G. Gallup Jr did was anesthetize them and make a mark with paint on their head. This paint did not contain any type of ingredient that could alter the smell or touch of chimpanzees. What Gordon was looking for was to know how many times chimpanzees touched their heads.

Although several chimpanzees showed signs of recognizing themselves in front of the mirror, for example, adjusting their position to see themselves better or touching the mark on their head, according to the article Animal self-awareness: studies on conditional self-discrimination in various species, “two chimpanzees that had not previously used the mirror were unable to direct a single response to their marked head”.

This brought the mirror test into question.since the researchers came to think that the chimpanzees must have previously had contact with the mirror in order to be able to perform certain attitudes that could indicate that they recognized their image.

Furthermore, “it has recently been shown that chimpanzees that passed the self-recognition test They did not show the slightest sign of astonishment or surprise at seeing their own deformed image. in a mirror that distorted them.” This raised more doubts, since anyone who recognizes her image in a mirror is amazed and even scared by this.

Animals in the mirror

Not only chimpanzees were subjected to the mirror test. They were too pigeons, dolphins, elephants and dogs, among other animals. Many of them passed it, that is, they recognized their own image of her in the mirror. However, the previous questions we have raised yield many disparate opinions in this regard.

The reason is that many animals can act by ignoring the image and others by attacking it. However, another aspect that has made researchers who have analyzed the mirror test doubt is that some lack a fine sense of vision. An example is those animals that see much better at night.

The fish that was recognized

In February of this year the newspaper, The country shared a very striking news and that is that a fish had passed the mirror test. This is the blue wrasse and the discovery was made by Masanori Kohda, the scientist who studied the behavior of this species of fish. Apparently, the fish saw a brown spot on its reflected belly and tried to get it off by rubbing against the tank.

Although several species of fish passed the test in Gordon’s test, doubts remain. In the diary itself The country Some experts believe that, although these animals act in a way that we could consider that they recognize themselves in the mirror, in reality this It can be an indicator that they are ready to recognize themselves, but have not yet achieved it.

The demonstration could be related to the fact that “Chimpanzees raised in isolation are unable to pass the mirror test: the other is needed to think about the self.”. Something quite significant and that leaves many open fronts to think about.

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