Mirror tests, self awareness, and cats

We recently had a new male cat, Braveheart, join our household of three female cats. He is about 1.5 years old, and very curious about things. His new sisters have been defending their territory in standard ways, but he's already been accepted by our 15 year old female Candy, and the 7 year old selkirk rex cat, Baby Bear. However, his 6 year old sister, Monkey, from Bulgaria, she is still playing a lot of intimidation games with him, spending as much time as possible staring at him from various high perches. He is a somewhat timid cat, but after only two days, he is spending a lot of time with the family, he likes being with people.

I probably pay the most attention to our cats, so they follow me everywhere, including into the bathroom. The food and water bowls for the cats are across the hall from our bathroom. I watched as Braveheart jumped up on the bathroom sink, and then was staring very intently at the mirror image of his sisters eating at the food bowl. His own reflection was much closer to him, and bigger, but he ignored that, and was obviously very interested in watching his sisters via the reflection in the mirror. Was this cat demonstrating that cats are self aware?

This is an interesting question. Many have asked:

"Can cats have their own mind? Are they conscious? Are cats self aware?"

According to Stan Franklin in his book Artificial Minds, evidence of self-recognition in a mirror can be taken as sufficient to conclude self-awareness. Some great apes have passed this test, while baboons, gibbons and some monkeys can't be shown to be self aware in this way. But doesn't it demonstrate intelligence to ignore oneself, and instead concentrate on the images of more interesting individuals in the mirror?

Mirror tests are used by psychologists to get an idea whether an animal is self aware.

Google queries on this subject

Interesting fact: Cats are commonly mentioned in articles about self awareness....

• "self aware" mirror - 181,000 results
• "self aware" mirror cats - 85,400 results

How The Mirror Test Works

Psychologists believe that a "mirror test" can show whether a child or an animal has self-consciousness. Someone will put a red dot on their forehead while they're asleep and then see how they react to their reflection when they look in a mirror. If orangutans, say, can put their hand on their forehead when they see a red dot on the forehead of the image of the orangutan in the mirror, it's supposed to show that the orangutan is thinking, "Hey, that's me, and I've got a red dot on my forehead."

Comments:

• expectation of object permanence is a developed behavior not demonstrated by babies or most animals
• Negatives on this test don't establish lack of self-awareness, but positives are supposed to show self-awareness
• one can train some monkey species to use mirrors (I believe some of the research is presented in Anderson & Gallop, 1999, "Self-recognition in non-human primates: past and future challenges," which was in Animal Models of Human Emotion and Cognition. In essence, the animals learn to use mirrors to locate objects in the environment which they cannot see without the use of mirrors, but they still perform no self-directed behaviors when looking in the mirror.
• I love watching my cats explore the mirrors in our house. Mostly, they'll paw at the cat in the glass and sometimes, they'll make noises of conversation. Often, they'll peer around the mirror to the back to see where the other cat is hiding. It really occupies their time.

Source

Gordon Gallup's Mark On The Face Test

One test, devised in 1970 by Gordon Gallup, involves applying a mark to the animal's face without its knowledge. If it can recognize itself in the mirror, it will understand that the mark it sees is on its own face. Evidence of this would be surprise, or an effort to investigate the mark, perhaps by turning to view it at different angles, or touching the actual mark with a paw. Gallup found that chimps would readily learn to recognize themselves, but macaque monkeys would not, even after several weeks of exposure to a mirror.

Human children fail the mirror test at one year of age, but pass at two. Until recently, great apes (like chimps) and dolphins were the only animals besides humans who succeeded. Now, it seems African elephants must be added to the list.

For the record, I have tried the mirror test on my cat. She is very devious, and in order to commit deliberate deceit, one must know that there is a significant difference between one's own knowledge pool and that of others - basically, you're self-aware. So I was hopeful. My cat did not pass, although she can recognize me in a mirror and apparently knows what a mirror is (a flat reflective surface, not a window). However, cats are notoriously noncompliant with experimental protocols, so as far as I'm concerned, the jury's still out.

Update: I just noticed that the October 30 New Yorker cover depicts a cartoon cat spitting at its reflection in a mirror. I can't tell if the cat is genuinely afraid of its own reflection (failing the mirror test), or taking advantage of the mirror to practice its Halloween performance art (passing the mirror test). Either way, it's timely.

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Self Recognition and Awareness

All living organisms draw some sort of distinction between self and other. For example, the job of our immune system is to identify and destroy alien cells, whilst leaving our own ones untouched. But no-one would thereupon conclude that our immune system is self-aware.

Criticism of Gallup's test: Marking the arm of the animal, and the animal reacting to the mark on the arm would not surprise us. Why does adding a mirror change the analysis.

Perhaps some animals don't react to the mirror because of basic differences in their visual processing system. Other basic differences cause cats to react differently to strings than do dogs.

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Intelligence in Cats

• Intelligence in Cats
• How to do a mirror test with cats and dogs - http://www.yesmag.bc.ca/projects/smarter.html

Other references

• article of National Geographics regarding this test.
• Consciousness comes from DNA - http://richarddawkins.net/article,1057,Consciousness-Comes-from-DNA,Carl-Sagan-and-Ann-Druyan-edited-by-John-Hartman Questions and answers include:
  • Is the origin of consciousness an unfathomable mystery? Does it require the insertion of an immaterial soul into each human being, but no other animal, at the moment of conception?
  • If the information in the DNA has come to be through the patient evolutionary process, why is a god needed to explain the injection of data, genes, or souls in the first place?
    • all the god has to do is to encode directly into the DNA of a few ancestors whatever information souls are required to know.
  • Is the ability of a cell to distinguish itself from another cell evidence of consciousness and self-awareness?
  • Is there compelling evidence chimps, orangutans, and dolphins are conscious and self-aware?
  • What would it mean if elephants could pass a mirror self-awareness test?
  • Does the DNA of humans, chimps, orangutans, dolphins, and elephants provide the instructions for these species to become conscious and self-aware?
  • Source References
    • 1. Sagan, Carl. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors / Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. Chapter 19. What is Human? Pages 377-379. (2002)

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    • 2. Hayes, Jacqui. Elephants Possess Self-Awareness. Cosmos Online. (2006)http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/812

• http://physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-8259.htmlbr/t-9667.html
  • Discussion of self awareness and consciousness
  • Could chat bots become self aware in a century if their performance doubles just once every ten years?

• wikipedia article about the mirror test - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test