Can animals recognize them when looking at mirrors?

Seeing his image with his eyebrows unexpectedly dyed red, four chimpanzees were startled, reacting like humans when falling into the same situation.

For decades, scientists have examined the intelligence of animals by observing whether they can identify themselves in the mirror.

In 1970, psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr numbed four chimpanzees and dyed their eyebrows. When these chimpanzees catch themselves in the mirror, they react like humans when they fall into the same situation.

They touched their eyebrows with their hands, touching them for a long time. Gallup concluded that chimpanzees can recognize its image. This is a sign that they possess a high level of wisdom: the ability to identify themselves .

Dogs can identify smells better than their images - (Photo: MARC PISCOTTY).

A well-known way to test animal intelligence is a 'mirror recognition' test . Specifically, animals are marked on a part of the body that they often do not see, and expose them to the mirror.

If they are surprised and check that spot on their own bodies, not in the mirror, and they affect these areas longer than usual, they pass the test.

In addition to chimpanzees and some orangutans, other species such as dolphins, Asian elephants, and European wicked birds have also passed this test. We must think these are smart animals.

However, there are also many cleverly famous animals like crows, parrots, gorillas, monkeys, dogs, and even small children who fail to do the test.

Many scientists believe that this test is biased because it is designed for animals that use eyesight as the main senses.

Specifically for dogs, this species lives mainly by smell. If you want to know whether they can recognize themselves or not, you have to put it in their world - the sense of smell.

Marc Bekoff from the University of Colorado, USA pioneered this with his own dog, Jethro. During the 5 winters, he dug snow layers that Jethro and other dogs peeed up and moved to new positions.

He discovered that Jethro needed less time to smell its urine than other dogs.'He can't recognize himself in the mirror but can completely detect its smell , ' Bekoff said.

Inspired by this experiment, Horowitz conducted a wider and more complete study. She recruited 36 volunteers in New York and for their dogs distinguish each pair of boxes.

Both contain some urine from the dog itself, but a box added to another scent - acts like a red stain on the heads of animals in the experiment with mirrors.

As a result, the dogs spend more time sniffing the box that smells more mixed.

Live dogs are mostly olfactory.

Horowitz repeated the experiment with 12 new dogs. This time, she changed the box with a strange smell by making their urine smell more neutral. And again, these dogs spend more time poring over patterns with other impurities.

'For me, this is an interesting finding, similar to the story of apes that looks at the red mark on their heads,' Horowitz said.

'This study shows how we ask about the intelligence of an animal as important as the question we posed,' said Moniquie Udell, who studies dog intelligence from the University. Oregon states.

'In many cases, forcing a dog to perform exercises specifically for chimpanzees is like forcing a native Englishman to take a knowledge test in a language they have not yet learned,' she added.