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Self-Awareness in Animals There is an ongoing debate as to whether animals have consciousness or not; but in this article the question is to whether animals have self-awareness? Like humans’ minds and brains, animals’ minds and brains are concealed and subjective also. When an individual can identify, process, store information about the self, and has knowledge of one’s own mental states they are defined to have self-awareness. Knowing that an individual stays the same individual across time and is separate from the others’ and the environment is also a factor of having self-awareness. Gordon Gallup, a professor of psychology at the State University of New York in Albany says that “self-awareness provides the ability to contemplate the past, to project into the future, and to speculate on what others are thinking”. Studies have been done mainly on primates to test if self-awareness is present. Apes, chimpanzees, monkeys, elephants, and dolphins are studied most frequently. The most relevant studies to this day that represent self-awareness in animals have been done on chimpanzees, dolphins, and magpies.

The ‘Red Spot Technique’ created and experimented by Gordon Gallup studies self-awareness in animals (primates). In this technique, a red odorless spot is placed on an anesthetized primate’s forehead. The spot is placed on the forehead so that it can only be seen through a mirror. Once the individual awakens, independent movements toward the spot after seeing their reflection in a mirror are observed. During the Red Spot Technique, after looking in the mirror, chimpanzees used their fingers to touch the red dot that was on their forehead and even after touching the red dot they would smell their fingertips. "Animals that can recognize themselves in mirrors can conceive of themselves," says Gallup. This would mean that the chimpanzees would possess self-awareness. Note that the chimpanzees have had experience with a mirror before the ‘Red Spot Technique’ was performed. Having experience with a mirror before the technique was performed reflects the past, independent movement while looking in the mirror would reflect the present, and touching the red dot would reflect what others’ are thinking which relates perfectly to Gallup’s statement in the beginning of this article. Chimpanzees, the most studied species, compare the most to humans with the most convincing findings and straightforward evidence in the relativity of self-awareness in animals so far.

Dolphins were put to a similar test and achieved the same results. Diana Reiss, a psycho-biologist at the New York Aquarium discovered that bottlenose dolphins can recognize themselves in mirrors. In her experiment, Reiss and her colleagues drew with temporary black ink on some of the dolphins in the aquarium on parts of their bodies that they could only see in a mirror. A gigantic mirror was placed inside the dolphins’ tank. The dolphins who did not get drawn on ignored the mirror, but the dolphins who did get drawn on “made a bee-line to see where they’d been marked” according to Reiss. After the experiment the dolphins that have been drawn on once, returned to the mirror to inspect themselves even when they were ‘drawn’ on again but with clear water. The dolphins recognized the feeling and remembered the action from when they were drawn on which relates to a factor of self-awareness.

Magpies are a part of the crow family species. Recently, similar to the Red Spot Technique, researchers studied magpie’s self-awareness by using the Mark Test. In this study, Prior and Colleagues performed eight sessions per magpie (5) tested twice, using two different colors; yellow and red. The bird was marked with either yellow or red, or a black imitation mark (the black mark is an imitation because magpies are black in feather color). The magpies were tested with a mirror and a colored mark, a mirror and a black mark, no mirror and a colored mark, and no mirror and a black mark. The sessions were twenty minutes long each, and each color (red or yellow) was used once. The black (imitation) mark experiment that is put on the Magpies is comparative to the Dolphins in Reiss’s study when they were ‘drawn’ on with clear water. The imitation marks (and being drawn on with clear water), if recognized shows that no anesthesia is needed and the remembrance of the action does represent self-awareness. The differences between the Red Spot Technique and Reiss’s Dolphin study compared to the Mark Test are that in the Red Spot Technique the primates are anesthetized and have prior experiences with a mirror where in the Mark test, the magpies were not anesthetized nor experienced with a mirror.

Majority of birds are blind to the area below the beak near the throat region due to it being out of their visual field; this is where the color marks were placed during the Mark Test, alternating from yellow to red. In the Mark Test, a mirror was presented with the reflective side facing the magpie being the only interpretation of the bird seeing the marked spot they had on them. During one trial with a mirror and a mark, three out of the five magpies showed a minimum of one example of self-directed behavior. The magpies explored the mirror by moving toward it and looking behind it. One of the magpies, Harvey, during several trials would pick up objects, posed, did some wing-flapping, all in front of the mirror with the objects in his beak. This represents a sense of self-awareness; knowing what is going on within himself and in the present. In all of the trials with the mirror and the marks, never did the birds peck at the reflection of the mark in the actual mirror. All of the behaviors were towards their own body but only heightened when there was a mirror present and the mark was of color. Behavior towards their own bodies concluded in the trials when the bird removed the mark. For example, Gerti and Goldie, two of the magpies being studied, removed their marks after a few minutes in their trials with a colored mark and a mirror. After the mark was removed, there were no more behaviors toward their own bodies.

A few slight occurrences of behavior towards the magpies own body happened in the trial with the black mark and the mirror. It is an assumption in this study that the black mark may have been slightly visible on the black feathers. Prior and Colleagues, stated “This is an indirect support for the interpretation that the behavior towards the mark region was elicited by seeing the own body in the mirror in conjunction with an unusual spot on the body.”

The behaviors of the magpies clearly contrasted with no mirror present. In the no-mirror trials, a non-reflective gray plate of the same size and in the same position as the mirror was swapped in. There were not any mark directed self-behaviors when the mark was present, in color, or in black. Prior and Colleagues, data quantitatively matches the findings in chimpanzees. In summary of The Mark Test, the results show that magpies understand that a mirror image represents their own body; magpies show to have self-awareness. In conclusion, the fact that primates and magpies spot the markings on them and examine themselves better means, according to theory, that they are seeing themselves which means they are self-aware. According to the definition stated earlier in this section, if an individual can process, identify, store information (memory), and recognize differences, they are self-aware. The chimpanzees, dolphins, and magpies have all demonstrated these factors in the mentioned experiments.

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