14 DAY TRIAL // A recent study added another member to the list of the creatures that prove self-awareness capabilities besides humans, dolphins, apes and magpies. It's the elephant, which has been proven to be able to recognize its own face in the mirror.
Only seven years ago, everybody was absolutely convinced that the self-awareness capacity was a trait solely belonging to humans and a few species of the big apes. That was the case until Diana Reiss from New York's Columbia University demonstrated that, when showed a mirror, dolphins place themselves in such manner as to be able to distinguish a mark on their body that couldn't otherwise be observed. This clearly indicates their ability of being aware of their own reflection, which is a sign of understanding the concept of individuality.
Since all the studied animals have larger brains than the rest of their similar species and showed obvious signs of empathy towards members of their own kind, the natural conclusion was for Reiss to look for similar self-awareness abilities in elephants. They are known to be social animals, helping each other and even mourn their dead, as some believe. Thus, together with Frans de Waal and Joshua Plotnik of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, Reiss went to the Bronx Zoo in New York and presented three of the Asian elephants there (Happy, Maxine and Patty) with a large mirror - the already classic self-awareness test for animals.
When subjected to their own exposure, animals usually react according to their appropriate social standards while they inspect the mirror (most often even looking behind it to search for the intruder). But the elephants, while first spending a lot of time inspecting the mirror with their trunks and searching behind and under it, lost their interest. As a matter of fact, they didn't try to socialize with their mirror image at all. Instead, they acted in front of it in ways they normally don't when in the presence of other elephants (like eating). They went even further and proceeded to performing a series of repetitive gestures they would normally never do (sticking the trunk in their mouth, pulling their ears) in order to observe whether the reflection did the same.
For the next step, the elephants were painted a visible mark over their right eye and an invisible one above their left eye. Out of the three elephants, only Happy showed interest in the mark (only the visible one, as expected), touching it with her trunk. Patty and Maxine didn't pass the test, but Reiss is still content, knowing that only one of two chimpanzees had passed it as well. Although the test still has to be applied to other elephants as well, it has clearly indicated that these animals possess self-awareness traits. Similar past tests were not successful but that was only because the mirrors used for testing were too small in order for the elephants to be able to see their whole image in them. “Elephants don’t have the best eyesight,” explains de Waal. “It’s important that the mirror is the size of an elephant and is accessible.”
