Can Dogs Smell Their ‘Reflections’?
In 1970, a psychologist named Gordon Gallup Jr. anesthetized four chimpanzees and applied red dye to their eyebrows. When the chimps came around, they caught sight of their reflections in a mirror that had been placed in their enclosure. And they did what you or I might do in those circumstances—they touched their eyebrows, prodding at the marks. Gallup concluded that chimps could recognize their own reflections—a feat that “would seem to require a rather advanced form of intellect” and that “implies a concept of self.”
Thus was born the mirror test—one of the most famous techniques in the study of animal intelligence, and one of the most controversial. The test has been administered if it interacts with that area more often than usual, then it passes the test.
