by Grania
Jerry asked me to post this video after we both had come across it via different sources. I remember my own animals’ reactions to the mirror – we had a large one on the floor propped up against a wall once upon a time, and on various occasions a resident felid or canid would pass by and notice themselves. The cats didn’t seem to be interested or impressed (are they ever?). One of our wolf-descendants tried to threaten the mirror in all earnestness and required a fair amount of tender aftercare to reassure him that the monster in mirror was gone. Another spent a great deal of time investigating behind the mirror (smart girl) and worrying why she couldn’t find anyone there. Our four-footed cousins are a lot like us.
2DayFM Australia has some background:
Innovative French photographer Xavier Hubert Brierre travelled to Gabon with his wife and set up a mirror in several locations in order to capture animals walking by.
The results are stunning, with one of the more amusing reactions being from two leopards.
One of them takes several looks at the mirror before it is attacked by a second leopard, who calls off the ambush when he too spots Xavier’s mirror.
I once had a young golden retriever who was startled when he saw his reflection in the glass door of a fireplace. He ran down a hall, around a corner, and into the bedroom behind the fireplace to find the other dog.
I also get upset when I look in the mirror and see an ape. Then I look around and no one else is there. 🐒
Totes amazeballs.
I’m pleased to see our closest relatives seem to have the most interesting ‘take’. They are cautious but not so frightened they can’t analyze the situation. The way they watch their gestures reflected back at them clearly shows the wheels turning in the frontal lobes.
I’d love to see Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and Homo neanderthalensis react to this stimulus.
AFAIK the latest view is that Neanderthals were a human subspecies and not some sort of missing link, so they could be expected to recognize their image as well as we do, because they are us.
Though I expect any stone age homo sapiens might initially react with some surprise and unusual display, just given the technological novelty. For me, the interesting follow-up experiment isn’t to see how even more animals react, but to see if these particular Gabonese animals figure it out after several weeks or months of exposure.
As a Neanderthal-American myself (about 2.8% Neanderthal), I would agree with this view. Would not some early hominids have been able to see their reflection in the surface of water in ponds, for example, and figure it out?
Or what about even Homo sapiens? Are there any examples of this from cultures who don’t have any experience with mirrors? Or are reflective surfaces common enough that every culture has at least some experience seeing their own reflection (such as in calm water)?
There seems to be quite a lot of learning associated with perception, even in human societies. I have dim recollections of reading of some African tribe that lives in round huts in the bush and who have trouble comprehending straight line perspective; and also that such cultures cannot ‘see’ the subjects in photographs.
I have no idea how apocryphal this may be, though.
Great idea. I want more.
sub
I’m actually kinda surprised the cats are fooled/care. Not because I think they are smart enough to pass the mirror test, but because I would think the image wouldn’t smell to them like another cat.
The second leopard clip was interesting. It seemed as if it had begun to figure it out.
The felids did better than the gorillas but not quite as well as the chimps. Which is actually about what I would have expected, based on Baihu’s own mirror encounters.
A really interesting experiment…would be to take some of the felids, let them get used to the mirror…and then give them fake manes and re-expose them to the mirror. And then remove the manes after things have settled down again.
Smudges of dirt are significant to apes, especially considering how much time is devoted to grooming of self and others. Smudge of dirt mean diddly squat to a cat who’s liable to roll in the dirt for a good dusting.
b&
Not with mirrors, but somewhat related: a friend’s cat used to look out his back door and see squirrels disappear under the deck. Kitty would race downstairs and look out the basement window to continue watching the squirrels under the deck. Friend moved into a similar but not identical house, with the basement windows positioned differently. Kitty dashed down the stairs to look for the disappeared sqrl, and WTF, was so confused as to where the window and sqrl had gone.
Cats most definitely build mental models of all sorts. They’d have to, or else they’d have no luck with the hunt. And, as typically solitary hunters, their models have to include not so much the minds of other cats, but the minds of their prey…to catch da boid you must become da boid….
b&
It might be interesting to have two mirrors facing each other to give the “infinite recursion” effect. That tripped me out when I was a kid.
When I was “Monkey Girl” in charge of a population of aged, female, captive-raised Macacus mulatta, I happened to notice that “my” Macaques used the ballet-bar mirror to monitor one anothers’ behaviour. Plus they seemed to be unuseaably, really into TeleTubbies, ’cause that was what was on the TeeVee in the room.
So I got the great idea of really cleaning their stainless-steel cages.
That was a really bad idea.
Once the film of proteins was removed, the 1st monkey who’d had this treatment just absolutely freaked out. My poor baby couldn’t recognise herself, although she could monitor her compatriots. She saw her reflection as not-her. I stopped the treatment at that time.
Wow, really clued me into how different (and mebbe the same, too) that we mammals are. Btw, my cat is fascinated with her reflection. Doesn’t watch teevee like others, but . . .
Oh. That would be “unusually.” SMH.
My wife and I used to breed and show Persian cats. When we introduced the kittens to mirrors in a similar fashion to that in the video. A common reaction was to investigate and attack the image. When this produced no results they would check behind the mirror. Finding nothing there they would from then on just ignore the mirror. Apparently if it didn’t smell like a cat and couldn’t be touched it wasn’t worth worrying about.
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Yes, I often thought the same about our cats: no smell of intruder cat means that there is no intruder cat.
…which presents another idea for an experiment.
Smell-o-vision, using the cat’s own scents, other cats’s scents, and so on in addition to the mirror.
After all, if vision is less important relative to smell for the cats than it is for us, us putting a cat in front of a mirror may well be much like a cat presenting us with lightly-secented cloths expecting to see some sort of meaningful reaction.
b&
I don’t know that it’s less important, just that the whole package doesn’t add up as far as some cats are concerned. One of our cats watched TV, the other wasn’t interested. And then there was this, but I don’t know how many cats actually were consulted afterwards to see if they were impressed.
I bet that’s one commercial that would be more effective (for the cats!) with smell-o-vision….
b&
In the wild, would not cats or any animal heavily reliant on scent be just as alert to the visuals.
They would have experienced some situations where their target intruder would be downwind with no scent issuing.
The big Cats seem to be onto this when hunting, coming from a downwind position to strike.
The cat ‘territorial rules’ may not even allow for this, attack the intruder! Anyhow, after the threat was disregarded, curiosity got the better..
The gorilla (it looked like a silverback) would have no truck with a opposing male of unknown lineage regardless of scent. Especially one that confronted him without a warning chest pound or how do you do. It did not take long to figure out pounding the reflection was more injurious to himself and not worth the energy. Mumble mumble.. better things to do, let’s eat!
Presumably animals see their own reflection whenever they drink from still water, so why does a mirror confuse them. The two immediately obvious differences are that (a) a mirror’s reflection is opaque rather than transparent, and (b) the mirror stands vertically rather than lying horizontally.
It might be interesting to lie a mirror flat on the ground to see if it elicits a different reaction, or indeed any reaction at all.
I would guess another factor is clarity and the fact that the surface isn’t moving. Perfectly still water is extremely rare, and can fool even humans (you can occasionally find the right conditions in caves). ‘Still’ lake or river water will still move and reflect sunbeams, which provides a sort of ‘visual context’ that its water.
Perfectly still water is extremely rare, and can fool even humans
Indeed, just ask Narcissus. 😉
Somewhat off-topic, but there’s a peculiar mirror illusion I observe when I go to the symphony.
Presumably most of us have had the experience of being in an unfamiliar restaurant and suddenly realizing that the person staring at you from across the room is your own reflection in a mirror you’ve only just now noticed.
My odd symphony experience is the converse of this. Our symphony hall features two symmetrical grand stairways leading up from the lobby to the upper tiers. Descending those stairs in a crowd of people after a concert, I find myself looking for my own reflection in the crowd coming down the opposite stair, but of course I’m not there. Something about the geometry gives the strong impression of looking in a mirror even when I know there isn’t one.
Deepak would say it’s a quantum displacement of your life force. It’s a spooky action at a distance.
Spooky-woo
I remember reading, decades ago, about scientists or journalists who sought out an Amazon tribe with little or no experience with first world people. They took pictures of the tribesmen with a Polaroid camera and presented the pictures to them but the tribesman couldn’t discern themselves in the photographs. They looked at the prints curiously but simply didn’t “get” what the photographs depicted.
Someone had one of those plastic cards with an image that change depending on the angle of view. If I recall correctly, it was of a face with the eyes changing from open to closed as the angle of view was altered. The tribesmen, upon experimenting with it – alternating the angle of view back and forth suddenly realized they were viewing an image of a face. After that realization, they could view the Polaroids and see themselves. They would point to the person whose face appeared in a given photograph and laugh heartily.
How about those aggressive charges from the silverbacks???
Note: Never get into a territorial dispute with an adult male gorilla.
Yeah, I was sure that one charge was going to crack the mirror. From the video, it looks like they foresaw these violent interactions and had a solid design.
I was intrigued by the chimps too. Was wondering if they would become comfortable enough with the mirror to recognize “self” and start using it for self-grooming.
Then pan narcissus?
Fascinating.
But I can’t be the only one who thought at one instance watching the video…
“You planned to set up a mirror in the wild to let animals interact with it, spent all that time planning and setting it up…and didn’t think to bring a wash clothe?”
“cloth”
(Or at least paper towels…)
(She says apologising in advance for the sexism, but she can’t resist) it was men setting up the mirrors. 🙂
And I thought this was a “safe space,” Heather. I’m offended; please excuse me while I go organize a letter writing campaign and a march! 😉
Are you saying the gentleman in the video looks like he’s never seen a mirror? 🙂
These idiotic snowflakes who are offended and psychologically damaged by everything they encounter in university are, no doubt, surfing the Web and seeing the most vile shit ever conceived.
Or possibly he’s never cleaned a mirror – ducking🐾🐾
Cleaning a mirror? Sorry, could you run that one by me again?
I think it’s something like when you put a stainless steel part in a sandblaster. Maybe using 2000 grit sandpaper on a paint job?
b&
Clearly, it was an honeydew project for the men….
b&
When the apes first approached the mirror did anyone but me hear the theme to 2001 off in the distance?
What is wonderful is that there are still chimps, gorillas, leopards & elephant in Gabon. Long may they remain.
I hate to be a downer, but I wonder about the danger to the animals – I hope the mirror was flexible enough to not hurt one on a charge.
I’m sure they thought of that. Not hard at all to build a bulletproof mirror with more flex than a tree trunk. Polycarbonate (Lexan) for the “glass,” backed by mylar for the “silver,” and mounted on an aluminum frame would easily do the trick. Plus it’ll be light enough to be carried to the middle of nowhere by the humans.
b&
Yeah, the silver back struck the mirror hard and no cracks or noticeable harm.
Reblogged this on Jenniferhopewells141's Blog.
I was reminded of this …
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That scene looks pretty hokey by today’s film making standards. The idea that actors in suits could pass for apes is laughable. Besides homonins were upright from a very early time. But, I remember being transfixed by these scenes. Recently I learned that Stanley Kubrik was terrified of airline flight and did not want to travel to Africa with the film crew. He finally decided to fake the scene in the studio using a projected sky.
The film was nominated for an Oscar for make-up, iirc, but lost to _The Planet of the Apes_.
Strictly they were hominid-ish apes, so …
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True, there may have been early homonids which had a rather awkward gate. Planet of the Apes did not attempt to show half human body structure. Kubrik’s looked very awkward moving around that sound stage.