Why should a dog recognise itself in a mirror?

Darat

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Darat
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I was watching a TV programme that, in passing brought up the idea that only humans (and perhaps some of the apes) recognise themselves in a mirror and how dogs don't. The way they concluded that dogs don't is that they don't seem to correlate the image in the mirror to themselves e.g. put a red dot on a person's cheek and show them a mirror and they know that dot is on their cheek.

But today when I was out walking my dog I was watching her greet other dogs and it was quite apparent that dogs don't just rely on vision to identify other dogs. So couldn't another explanation for the apparent lack of an ability in dogs to recognise themselves in a mirror simply be that for a dog the required information, for such an identification, is simply not present?
 
Seems reasonable to me, though I do not know how you could test it: a smell mirror?
 
A mirror was used because it's an easy test. Your criticism of it is one that was made fairly early after it was devised, as well. Attempts to make scent tests for dogs have been made, but I'm unaware of any of these that did also have fundamental problems. (That doesn't mean that they don't exist, only that I don't know about them. :) )
 
I agree with the OP.

I think that in many tasks, such as finding food, vision is secondary to smell with dogs.

When my dog finds a piece of bread on the sidewalk, it is usually by smelling it rather than seeing it.
 
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Darat said:
I was watching a TV programme that, in passing brought up the idea that only humans (and perhaps some of the apes) recognise themselves in a mirror and how dogs don't. The way they concluded that dogs don't is that they don't seem to correlate the image in the mirror to themselves e.g. put a red dot on a person's cheek and show them a mirror and they know that dot is on their cheek.

But today when I was out walking my dog I was watching her greet other dogs and it was quite apparent that dogs don't just rely on vision to identify other dogs. So couldn't another explanation for the apparent lack of an ability in dogs to recognise themselves in a mirror simply be that for a dog the required information, for such an identification, is simply not present?
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I not sure I understand your argument. Your explanation is fine, but you don't say what their explanation was or how yours differs from it.
 
sphenisc said:
I not sure I understand your argument. Your explanation is fine, but you don't say what their explanation was or how yours differs from it.
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What they were saying was that dogs can't recognise themselves the way humans do and that indicates some lack of an "I" - in other-words when presented with an image they can't connect that image to themselves as we can do.
 
I think the point Darat is making is that the mirror test is usually taken as an indication of self awareness. Dogs fail the test and are therefore seen as less self aware than animals that pass the test. But because dogs rely more on scent than vision for identification purposes, this inference may be invalid.

ETA - oops, was writing as you were posting Darat.
 
Ahh... this is like the misinterpretation of the Turing test.

"Passing the test implies a sense of self."

doesn't mean that

"Not passing the test implies a lack of sense of self."
 
Hi

I remember seeing a TV show once that mentioned that a human's brain has a huge visual cortex, but a dog's brain is mostly olfactory cortex.

The show's writers said that, in fact, the dogs' olfactory and visual cortices were pretty much overlapping, so dogs may actually, "see," scents. I took that to mean that while their eyes only pick up sepia tone stuff, they may get colors like, "mostly horse meat, but had fish yesterday, and rolled in a decaying opossum within the last week."

I agree with the OP. The test is flawed because it makes assumptions of facts neither supported by research nor currently in evidence.
 
That's the explanation normally given by trainers and such; puppies will generally react to a mirror image as if it's another dog, but they rapidly learn there's no distinct scent, and thereafter ignore such reflections.
Now I suppose you could extrapolate this to a failure of recognizing "self"...But only visually.
 
I'm pretty sure it was the most recent "Are We Alone" podcast, with Seth Shostak where his guest was discussing pigs, and their intelligence. Pigs are one of the few animals who can use a mirror properly. As I remember it, they can find food behind something by viewing it in a mirror, not going after the mirror, but the actual food.
 
I wonder what opinion or awareness a dog has of their shadow.
 
Darat said:
What they were saying was that dogs can't recognise themselves the way humans do and that indicates some lack of an "I" - in other-words when presented with an image they can't connect that image to themselves as we can do.
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If "they're" saying that, it's not so accurate. From what I've heard, ethologists hold the mirror test as proof of the presence of self-awareness, but do not hold it as proof of the absence of self-awareness in animals that don't "pass" the test.
 
Professor Yaffle said:
Are there any other animals that rely more on smell than vision that DO pass the mirror test?
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I don't think so, but some cetaceans pass it, and you could argue that they rely as much on hearing for identification as dogs do on smell.

At any rate, while I think the test is good evidence of the presence of self-awareness, it ought not be used to argue for the absence of self-awareness.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
If "they're" saying that, it's not so accurate. From what I've heard, ethologists hold the mirror test as proof of the presence of self-awareness, but do not hold it as proof of the absence of self-awareness in animals that don't "pass" the test.
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That guy in the mirror already said that.


:)
 
My opinion on this, as an amateur zoologist and dog- (and cat-) lover, is that dogs don't react to a reflected image past the puppy stage because they recognize it for what it is -- a reflection, or at least, some kind of illusion -- and have no impetus to respond to it. If it cannot touch/affect them and they cannot touch/affect it, it is beyond their interest.

As to the "red dot on the face" test, I'd be interested in learning how the researchers achieved this test with a dog. Dogs cannot see color, it's said, so the animals would be unlikely to notice a spot of paint on their face, unless they could feel it. And, even if the animals did see the spot in the mirror, do we expect them to touch it, as human beings do, as an indication of self-awareness, with their paws? I'm not sure I buy that a dog would care if it had a paint spot on its face, again unless it could feel it, which would invalidate the mirror test.

On a side note, I've seen a youtube video of pugs watching themselves on a youtube video on a laptop. The dogs sat and watched themselves reacting (by tilting their heads) to their master's voice, asking them if they wanted to "go for a ride", as if they understood they were watching a video of animals rather than real animals. It's hard to say, of course, what was going on in their minds, but they did appear to recognize they were watching themselves.
 
With most animals, when they see the spot (doesn't have to be colour, it could be a very dark spot on a light coloured dog or vice versa) try to rub it off themselves in some way - if they pass the mirror test.

I did just notice this in the wikipedia article on the subject:

Adaptations of the mirror test have been made in other modalities, such as scent. For instance, biologist Marc Bekoff developed a paradigm using dog urine for testing self-awareness in canines.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test


ETA:

The simplest opposing argument is that failing the mirror test does not prove a lack of self-recognition. By its very nature, the test is biased in favor of visually oriented species with stereoscopic vision. Dogs, for example, are notorious for failing the mirror test. However, dogs also have relatively poor visual acuity, instead relying predominantly on their senses of smell and hearing. They don't recognize themselves in a mirror, but multiple studies have demonstrated that canines reliably recognize their own scent.
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http://everything2.com/node/1967156
 
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