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Mirror test implies elephants self-aware

By ANDREW BRIDGES
Associated Press Writer
Oct 31

WASHINGTON (AP) -- If you're Happy and you know it, pat your head.
That, in a peanut shell, is how a 34-year-old female Asian elephant
in the Bronx Zoo showed researchers that pachyderms can recognize
themselves in a mirror - complex behavior observed in only a few
other species.

The test results suggest elephants - or at least Happy - are self-
aware. The ability to distinguish oneself from others had been shown
only in humans, chimpanzees and, to a limited extent, dolphins.

That self-recognition may underlie the social complexity seen in
elephants, and could be linked to the empathy and altruism that the
big-brained animals have been known to display, said researcher Diana
Reiss, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the Bronx
Zoo.

In a 2005 experiment, Happy faced her reflection in an 8-by-8-foot
mirror and repeatedly used her trunk to touch an "X" painted above
her eye. The elephant could not have seen the mark except in her
reflection. Furthermore, Happy ignored a similar mark, made on the
opposite side of her head in paint of an identical smell and texture,
that was invisible unless seen under black light.

"It seems to verify for us she definitely recognized herself in the
mirror," said Joshua Plotnik, one of the researchers behind the
study. Details appear this week on the Web site of the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences.

Still, two other zoo elephants, Maxine and Patty, failed to touch
either the visible or invisible "X" marks on their heads in two runs
of the experiment. But all three adult female elephants at the zoo
behaved while in front of the jumbo mirror in ways that suggested
they recognized themselves, said Plotnik, a graduate student at Emory
University in Atlanta.

Maxine, for instance, used the tip of her trunk to probe the inside
of her mouth while facing the mirror. She also used her trunk to
slowly pull one ear toward the mirror, as if she were using the
reflection to investigate herself. The researchers reported not
seeing that type of behavior at any other time.

"Doing things in front of the mirror: that spoke volumes to me that
they were definitely recognizing themselves," said Janine Brown, a
research physiologist and elephant expert at the Smithsonian National
Zoological Park in Washington. She was not connected with the study
but expressed interest in conducting follow-up research.

Gordon Gallup, the psychologist who devised the mark test in 1970 for
use on chimps, called the results "very strong and very compelling."
But he said additional studies on both elephants and dolphins were
needed.

"They really need to be replicated in order to be able to say with
any assurance that dolphins and elephants indeed as species are
capable of recognizing themselves. Replication is the cornerstone of
science," said Gallup, a professor at the State University of New
York at Albany, who provided advice to the researchers.

The three Bronx Zoo elephants did not display any social behavior in
front of the mirror, suggesting that each recognized the reflected
image as itself and not another elephant. Many other animals mistake
their mirror reflections for other creatures.

That divergent species such as elephants and dolphins should share
the ability to recognize themselves as distinct from others suggests
the characteristic evolved independently, according to the study.

Elephants and mammoths, now extinct, split from the last common
ancestor they shared with mastodons, also extinct, about 24 million
years ago. In a separate study also appearing this week on the
scientific journal's Web site, researchers report finding fossil
evidence of an older species that links modern elephants to even
older ancestors.

The likely "missing link" is a 27 million-year-old jaw fossil, found
in Eritrea.
On the Net:

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org/

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Posted on SHARE Yahoo group Oct. 31, 2006