Animals also recognize themselves in pictures

Legend has it that the king of Maxodan was dissatisfied with the image of the beloved horse in his painting of a horse, and ordered the horse to come to show the errors to the artist. Just seeing my image, my horse suddenly raised his head and spoke loudly .

Will the legendary horse really recognize it in the picture? The horse and the animals in general are able to recognize their portraits or mirror images in the mirror and whether they can identify other animals of the same type, dummy and other images of copper. species?

Interesting tests

At the time of birth, German zoologist Grogimec deciphered this mystery. From a young age, when he was just a veterinarian, he decided to check whether animals were able to recognize his image. His friend, a German animal expert, had bears treating the teddy bear just like a flesh-and-blood fellow. But they did not pay any attention to the painted bear shape cut from the plywood panel.

Grogimec decided to start experimenting with horses.

(Photo: equisearch) He put on horse pants a large cardboard board with the picture of a horse with the size of the real thing. All horses treated the animal in accordance with their horse's rule: They smelled all the necessary places on the fake horse's body and stood close to it.

Moreover, the stallions even plan to jump on the mare in the painting and it is difficult for them to separate them.

Later, Grogimec created a picture of a dog-shaped picture on a horse's pants. The horses looked cautiously at the picture of the dog but did not come closer than 3 m. There was only one mare, probably played close to the dog, violently approached the male dog in the painting and sniffed his head. The other horses were dragged to the drawing and they proved very uncomfortable. It is obvious that the horses look at the picture not as simple as a piece of paper with a color but like a real dog. Thus, the horse recognized the shape of the animal and other animals in the painting. But what about other animals?

Two blue parrots tried to approach the two parrots embroidered on the picture and even pecked at the beak. They took care of each other like that.

Grogimec raised a domesticated wolf. Once he thought the mirror was a window and was about to break through it. It does not seem to recognize its image. But the tigers and lions, like the wildcat, expressed their attitude towards their silhouette and were very interested in the animal on the screen if they showed them the film to do experiments. They are capable of recognizing the same type of picture if the animals are about the size of the real thing.

Monkeys and chimpanzees are animals with relatives closest to humans, they recognize themselves in a mirror, on a painting, regardless of the size of the pictures in the painting. The monkeys also recognized the shapes of other animals and even initially tried to grab them.

Wild beasts cannot distinguish true - fake

A quarter of a century has passed and Grogimec, now a well-known scientist in the world, decided to repeat his experiment, this time not with horses but with beasts. He worked at a plastic and rubber factory with an elephant, a lion and a stretched plastic rhino, all three of them were about the size of their real size. And he went to 'Lake Maniara' National Park in Tanzania to conduct experiments in the field conditions. This time he collaborated with a young English zoologist, Ien Haminton, who studies elephants' lives in the national park.

At first, they let the lions see the effigy of a plastic zebra and then turned aside to wait. The lions flock to the zebra mannequin, grab it and tear it apart. And they are surprised because the prey is not edible.

Next, they let the other lions see their brother in plastic. Although it is not really like the god of forest painting, it is like a children's toy, but the lions receive it like a fellow. Two male lions approach the dummy and stare at it like hypnosis - unknown lions often behave like that when they meet when they want to scare each other. One of the last two opponents could not bear it, so they had to leave. But the lion mannequin of course doesn't know how to do it, not even blinking.

A monk lion came close to the effigy but was chased away by the two male lions, obviously afraid of competition. Finally, a whole group of lions consisting of female lions and young lions came. They took turns sniffing the mannequin, playing it and falling to the ground. A lion clawed and clawed lightly at it, puncturing 4 holes that caused the blows to blow and the effigy collapsed. The flood of lions left.

Finally, Grogimec and Ien put a piece of meat in front of the plastic lion and left to let the lion sit nearby to see all. It immediately crept close, but did not dare to grab the piece of meat because the male lion always ate first. Only when a wind makes the male lion man fall down, the female lion thinks 'male lion' lies to sleep, so he carefully takes away the piece of meat. Apparently all the lions considered the plastic lion as the real lion.

Later, the two scientists switched to experimenting with rhinos. Grogimec hides behind the massive plastic rhinoceros that has been pumped and pushed it towards the true rhino. This game is not as risky as one might expect, because the black African rhinos are famous for being aggressive, but never really fighting. They often only intimidate each other.

This time is the same. More than half an hour, the true rhino and the fake rhino, controlled by Grogimec, only advanced back and forth in each other. The difference in slight direction does not make the rhino doubtful, although their sense of smell is not inferior to that of dogs. It even took the horn to touch the opponent's soft plastic horn and didn't know it was tricked.

Until then, that game also made Grogimec bored; he stepped back toward the car and put the effigy into the trunk. The rhino is very pleased that the competitor has disappeared.

Finally, scientists do experiments with elephants. This time, the main character is Ien Haminton. He piggybacked on a large, large plastic elephant that was pumped and stretched its inlet between its forelegs and approached the forest elephants. The newcomer has made the herd pay attention and at this time, the other one tries to come close to explore.

But then the elephants also withdrew. No one is going to dig near. Do the experimentalists think that it is probably because the plastic elephant is white? Need to check. They found a large puddle of mud, threw the fake elephant into it, and put mud on the elephants from the tap to the tail. This time, the elephants came closer and even threatened the 'new elephant'.

But after that, something caused the elephants to be suspicious and they ran away. Perhaps they understand that there is no way a true elephant will ride on humans. Only a few people ride elephants.