NEW YORK: Scientists say elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror. These animals thereby join an exclusive club hitherto comprising humans, apes and dolphins.
Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research h Center at Emory University and Wildlife Conservation Society in New York carried out a study and found indications that female elephants examine their own reflections in a mirror and not mistake them for another elephant.
The scientists say self-recognition is to be related to the capability of identifying and understanding other's feelings and the ability to distinguish oneself from others. This capability had evolved independently in several species of animals. Elephants, being social animals, had been believed to have several such inherent capabilities. The finding is an evidence of such belief, the scientists say.
Joshua Plotnik, a psychologist at Emory University in Atlanta and who led the team of scientists in the study, said the social complexity of the elephant, its well-known altruistic behavior and its huge brain make it a logical species for testing in front of a mirror.
This study covered three female elephants at the Bronx Zoo in New York who were exposed to an eight-ft mirror. The scientists noticed that the elephants tested their respective images by making repetitive body movements and inspecting themselves like taking their trunks inside their mouths. They apparently understood the images to be their own and did not mistake them for other elephants.
One of the elephants even touched a mark on her head she could see only in a mirror, the scientists said.
As the animals were taken before the large mirror, they first tried to look behind the mirror, swinging their trunks over the mirror and wall, kneeling in front to look under it, and even trying to climb the wall holding the mirror. This indicated self-awareness.
Plotnik said the current study is the first to have the animals see themselves in front of huge, life-size mirrors, which they could touch, run against and try to look behind.
The findings of the study appear in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Plotnik says the self-recognition could be the basis for the social complexity previously observed in elephants and this could be related to the empathy and altruism these animals are known to display.
