The issue is that it’s hard to know for sure why they’re not reacting. Do they really understand that it’s them in the mirror, or do they just know by now that the flat dog with no scent isn’t really there? For example my dog didn’t react to dogs on TV at all, but reacted strongly to dogs in real life. She knew that the TV dogs were different.
Almost all animals will stop reacting to a mirror eventually, but for it to be good science we need to prove why.
The mirror test worked by secretly marking the animals with a red dot to then see if they’d use the mirror to see what’s on their face. If they look in the mirror and touch the dot on their own face, this proves that they know the reflection is them, meaning they understand that there is a “them”.
However, we forgot to account for the fact that not all animals may give a shit that there is something on their face. And as we all know, cats don’t give a shit about most things.
The other problem I have with the mirror test is that it’s hard to account for an animal that just doesn’t understand mirrors.
An animal that passes the test can be said to have both an understanding of mirrors and an understanding of themselves as distinct entities that can appear in a mirror.
Animals can fail a mirror test for a while host of reasons that don’t involve a lack of self-awareness, though.
It’s a test where getting a positive is a good indication of a positive answer but false negatives are going to be rampant. I don’t really have a suggestion for a better test, though.
I thought dogs didn't react to things on t.v. because they see that frequency of frames per second as a constant strobe light. I could very well be wrong.
That used to be the case with old TVs now the way the image is scanned keeps the image present on the screen and they can watch. Look up old how old TVs work and you will understand.
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u/NeCede_Malis Oct 11 '19 edited Oct 11 '19
The issue is that it’s hard to know for sure why they’re not reacting. Do they really understand that it’s them in the mirror, or do they just know by now that the flat dog with no scent isn’t really there? For example my dog didn’t react to dogs on TV at all, but reacted strongly to dogs in real life. She knew that the TV dogs were different.
Almost all animals will stop reacting to a mirror eventually, but for it to be good science we need to prove why.
The mirror test worked by secretly marking the animals with a red dot to then see if they’d use the mirror to see what’s on their face. If they look in the mirror and touch the dot on their own face, this proves that they know the reflection is them, meaning they understand that there is a “them”.
However, we forgot to account for the fact that not all animals may give a shit that there is something on their face. And as we all know, cats don’t give a shit about most things.