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Coco is the world's famous "talking" gorilla. Once, Coco didn't get any juice, so he had to drink water from a plate on the floor. It uses a thick rubber straw to drink water and signs to say that it is a "poor elephant". Coco connects the straw to the elephant trunk and uses a metaphor to identify himself.

Coco also jokes in sign language, expressing emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, fear and love, and even asking for hugs, food, pets and human attention.

When facing the mirror, Coco will make faces, check her teeth and even put on lipstick. When asked what he saw in the mirror, it would say "me". The administrator asked, "who is it?" He replied "Coco", describing himself as a "delicate gorilla".

In 1978 and 1985, Coco twice appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazine, which in 1978 showed Coco taking a selfie of himself in the mirror with a camera.

Kanzi, a famous bonobo, uses hieroglyphs to communicate with humans, such as asking the administrator if he can light a fire to roast marshmallows. How amazing that he can do these two things by himself. ) it uses hieroglyphs to ask guests what kind of coffee they want, asks to go out, invites humans to play games, and even reminds administrators to be "careful" when they see their feet slipping. When asked if it is ready to do something it has been waiting for for a long time, it sometimes answers, "it's a thing of the past."

Like Coco, Kanzi can recognize himself in mirrors and videos. In fact, Kanzi uses cameras and mirrors to practice blowing balloons and bubblegum. He likes both activities very much, but he is not proficient in them, and by watching videos, he can constantly improve his skills.

Another Kanzi ape, the orangutan Shatke, uses sign language to ask for his favorite food, ask for a ride to the restaurant, ask for the cage to be cleaned, and so on. It understands the concept of money and used to clear fences and do other chores in exchange for change-money. It uses the change to "buy" food such as ice cream.

Like Coco and Kanzi, Shatterk can recognize himself in the mirror and call himself a "gorilla man". When he moved to the zoo and saw that other orangutans could not use sign language, he called them "yellow dogs". Shatke knew they were orangutans, so his caretaker thought his deliberate tone was to distance himself from them.

By studying cocoa, Kanzi, Shatterk and other "talking apes", scientists were able to learn a little about the brains of non-human animals and gather evidence that animals are self-aware. The ability to distinguish yourself from others is a level of self-awareness, which is considered to be a sign of wisdom. But in the animal kingdom, few animals can show self-awareness with sign language or hieroglyphics, so scientists need to judge whether animals are self-aware by other criteria. One of the criteria is whether animals can pass the "mirror test", a self-awareness test developed by psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. In 1970.

The "mirror test" is to put the animals in front of the mirror and observe their reactions to determine whether they can recognize themselves. If they don't recognize themselves in the mirror, but turn a blind eye, attack, or try to play with the mirror, they fail the test. If it recognizes itself, it partially passes the test. The researchers marked the animals with an odorless paint or label, and the animals could only see the marks with the help of a mirror. Only when the animal recognizes its own mirror image, sees the mark on the mirror, and looks at the mark on itself, can it be considered to have completely passed the test.

To date, a total of 11 species (excluding humans) have fully or partially passed the mirror test: ants, Asian elephants, bonobos, bottlenose dolphins, chimpanzees, European magpies, gorillas, manta rays, orangutans, killer whales and rhesus monkeys.

When these animals stand in front of mirrors or video monitors, orangutans react similar to humans: they look at their marks and shake them to get rid of them. Some animals also repeatedly open and close their mouths, stick out their tongues, make faces, and try to look at their backs. Austin, a chimpanzee who lives in the same research facility as Kenzi, even brought a flashlight and carefully examined his throat. Austin had never seen anything like this before, nor was it encouraged by the administrator, and the behavior was completely spontaneous.

The European magpie is the first non-mammal to pass the mirror test. Before the experiment, scientists thought that self-consciousness came from the cerebral cortex, a brain structure that existed only in the brains of mammals. Birds do not have a cerebral cortex, so no one can predict that they are self-aware. When they react to themselves in the mirror, scientists change their understanding of birds and the brain. In front of the mirror, the magpie moves its head, flaps its wings, and changes its posture. When they see strange markers on their feathers in the mirror, they try to peck with their beaks or scratch them with their claws.

Magpie another kind of non-mammal that subverts traditional scientific concepts is a kind of fish-manta rays. In 2016, University of South Florida researcher Kira Ali filmed two giant manta rays in a fish tank. The scientists photographed the normal behavior of manta rays without a mirror, and then placed the mirror to see if they had changed their behavior.

After the appearance of the mirror, manta rays show unusual behavior, indicating that they have a certain degree of self-awareness: they circle in front of the mirror, shake their fins and blow bubbles, which are rare for manta rays. They did not try to interact with their own images, suggesting that they did not treat them as other manta rays. Scientists did not label manta rays, and they did not have a chance to look in the mirror, so they did not fully pass the test, but the researchers believe that manta rays' responses fully show that they are self-aware.

Manta rays, which have the highest brain-weight ratio, exhibit curious, playful behavior and seem particularly interested in humans. Even insects (a kind of marching ant) have recently passed a mirror test. In front of the mirror, the ant turns its head left and right, shakes its tentacles, and touches its own mirror with its mouth. When the researchers stained their lip base, a smooth area above the ant's mouth, with a blue dot, the ant found an anomaly in the mirror, so it wiped the lip base with its foreleg and touched it with its antennae in an attempt to remove the blue spot. Ants are tiny invertebrates, prompting scientists to consider the possibility that all animals may have at least a degree of self-awareness. But scientists also need to design more accurate tests.

Image source: although the mirror test is still regarded as the golden rule of self-awareness, researchers are increasingly aware of its limitations. For example, it is difficult for wild gorillas to pass the mirror test, which may be because wild gorillas avoid eye contact, which is offensive. Maybe that's why most gorillas naturally avoid looking at themselves in the mirror. The researchers realized that the unique way in which each animal perceives and responds to the world must be taken into account when looking for evidence of self-awareness. If you do not consider the differences in behavior and perception, you will come to the wrong conclusion. This even applies to mirror tests done on humans.

There is a common view that most human children can pass the self-awareness test at the age of two. But in fact, children from different cultural backgrounds show different patterns of self-awareness development. In Kenya, for example, only two of the 82 children (18 to 72 months old) who took the test passed the mirror test. Those who do not pass the children are also very normal, are healthy, well-adapted children. They are just not used to using mirrors, so they behave abnormally in front of the mirror and don't seem to be used to themselves in the mirror. Although they can't pass the test, it doesn't mean they don't have self-awareness. We should consider the differences caused by culture. Mirror tests on animals should also take this into account.

Pexels gorillas have taboos to avoid eye contact, and other animals may also have unique perceptual characteristics that affect their response to mirrors. Dogs, for example, fail the mirror test, which biologist Mark Bykov speculates because the most important senses of dogs are smell, not vision. They have about 30 million receptors on their noses, compared with 6 million in humans. In addition, they process 40 times more parts of the brain than humans. We should not let dogs recognize themselves in the mirror, but let them smell their own scent.

Only by taking into account that canines perceive the world mainly through their sense of smell can scientists develop self-cognitive tests that are suitable for canines.

Mirror testing used to be an important step in the study of self-awareness in animals. However, like the magic mirror in fairy tales, at least it reveals an unexpected truth: human beings may be the most self-conscious animals, but most of the time we cannot see our own prejudices or the way we form consciousness.

Author: Belinda Leisio translator: Zou Guiping and Zhao Xumao some of the image sources are copyright owned by the original author. Editor: Zhang Runxin ★ author profile ★

Belinda Lacio is a writer, educator and winner of the innovative Animal Society Research Award with a biological background. She has extensive experience in mass communication and has developed many science courses for educational television, museums and publishers. ★ content introduction ★

Through nearly 70 fresh and informed essays and more than 120 vivid and interesting pictures, the book "Animal Inner Notes" explores a variety of interesting animal behaviors from the perspectives of emotion and wisdom. the theme involves animal playfulness, friendship, death, sense of fairness, sense of humor, IQ and its evaluation. The book quotes a large number of quintessence of scientific research in the field of animal behavior. it also gives a wonderful introduction to today's popular popular science works, such as "what do fish know", "the talent of birds", "the silent call of octopus", "the soul of octopus", "the legend of crows" and "in pursuit of Doctor Doolittle". It provides a valuable opportunity for readers to easily understand the new developments and popular science classics in this field. This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Origin Reading (ID:tupydread), by Belinda Lescio, translated by Zou Guiping and Zhao Xumao, and edited by Zhang Runxin

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