Scientists have held a mirror up to animals to see if they have a representation of themselves.
Humans and Chimpanzees are the only two species in this exclusive club that respond in a way that shows how they represent themselves.
The Adélie penguins were put to the mirror test. The research team thinks there's enough evidence to think penguins have a sense of self-awareness.
The mirror test has been used to demonstrate self-awareness in animals. The method is easy to follow. The mirror is the first place animals arehabituated to. An obvious mark is placed on the test subject's body when they are snoozing. A self-awareness animal that sees the mark in the mirror will act in a way that shows they are aware of it.
The test isn't without its limitations as it seems to assume that reactions to a reflection under different circumstances might indicate a difference in self. It is one of the few ways in which we can begin to understand another person's thinking.
A team from India's Ministry of Earth Sciences introduced wild Adélie penguins to their own reflections during a series of experiments.
The penguins are very social and rely on colonial huddles to survive the cold winters. Unlike other mirror tests that have required animals to be in a captive environment, these animals are easy to test in a wild situation.
The penguins were exposed to the mirror. The animals looked at their reflections when they were isolated by cardboard enclosures and exposed to a mirror.
The penguins made rapid movements of their heads, flippers, or of their bodies, some of which appeared to be gestures. The visual attention of all the penguins was firmly on their images during the entire time span of their performance.
The birds didn't try to make contact with or show aggression towards their mirror image, suggesting that the bird in the mirror was not a friend or foe.
The penguins didn't react when they were marked with a red bib.
The team admits that there is anecdotal evidence that not all penguins can see red.
Dastidar and colleagues suggest that the experiments should be better designed in the future.
There is increasing evidence that the mirror test is not as clear-cut as it was intended to be. Unless monkeys are trained to use a mirror first, they will fail the test.
The animals that we're pretty sure are self aware have failed it as well.
Dogs are examples. They are capable of empathizing, a trait that also implies a sense of self and others, but they fail the mirror test.
The failure of the mirror test may be due to the fact that dogs are less sensitive to visual stimuli than humans and many apes are.
The sniff test is similar to the mirror test for dogs. The dogs were tested to see how they would react to snow marked with their own urine. The dogs spent more time smelling the other dogs' urine.
"This test provides significant evidence of self-awareness in dogs and can play a crucial role in showing that this capacity is not a specific feature of only great apes, humans, and a few other animals, but it depends on the way in which researchers try to verify it," said G
The idea that dogs have a clear sense of self is supported by other tests.
Our own children can not pass the mirror test until they are six years old in some countries. Failing the mirror test doesn't seem to confirm a lack of self-awareness that is so important in sociality.
The creator of the mirror test isn't sure if the penguin results are legit.
Gallup said that penguins may be capable of self-recognition. It would need more serious science than what is contained in this paper.
It's possible that self-awareness is a spectrum rather than a dichotomy as the mirror test suggests. New experiments are required to investigate this aspect of consciousness.
The research is waiting for a peer review.
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