Elephants more reflective than most - AP (no word if Repukes can see themselves).

[applegrove]

Elephants more reflective than most
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — If you're Happy and you know it, pat your head.

'That, in a peanut shell, is how a 34-year-old female Asian elephant in the Bronx Zoo showed researchers that pachyderms can recognize themselves in a mirror. It's complex behaviour observed in only a few other species.

The test results suggest elephants, or at least Happy, are self-aware. The ability to distinguish oneself from others had been shown only in humans, chimpanzees and, to a limited extent, dolphins.

That self-recognition may underlie the social complexity seen in elephants, and could be linked to the empathy and altruism that the big-brained animals have been known to display, said researcher Diana Reiss, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the Bronx Zoo.

In a 2005 experiment, Happy faced her reflection in an 2½-by-2½-metre mirror and repeatedly used her trunk to touch an “X” painted above her eye. The elephant could not have seen the mark except in her reflection. Furthermore, Happy ignored a similar mark, made on the opposite side of her head in paint of an identical smell and texture, that was invisible unless seen under black light.

...........SNIP"


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061030.welephant1030a/BNStory/Science/?cid=al_gam_nletter_newsUp

[applegrove]

1. Such self awareness is linked to empathy.