As I came through the bedroom door, Sherpa, who was sitting with her back to me at a corner of the dressing table where two mirrors meet at right angles, turned her head. I have no doubt that she heard me coming and that she also recognised my reflection as me, but did she equate the image of the cat in the mirror as herself? Does she realise that a unique cat we call Sherpa exists and is it she?
We are told that, unlike children older than two years, primates except gorillas, elephants and at least one magpie, cats fail the mirror self recognition test. This puts their self awareness in doubt. I don’t have access to the original research, so I don’t know the age of the cats tested and whether they had experience of mirrors or other reflective surfaces like puddles before being tested. I do know that both Banjo and Sherpa show a calmness when confronted by a cat image in a mirror, that is never apparent when a feline intruder enters their territory.
Their behaviour is very different to that of the blue tit which happened to see its reflection in the wing mirror of my car. The small bird undoubtedly saw, very close to where it stood, what looked like another member of its species, which failed to fly off when threatened. Bewildered it flew to the back of the mirror, found no bird there and returned to the reflective side. Repeated movements from one side to the other failed to establish a connection between the image and itself. Mirror self recognition was too difficult a problem for the undoubted problem solving abilities of this blue tit.
Mirror self recognition is only one aspect of self awareness. Full self awareness is something which I, and presumably the cats, have yet to achieve.
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