General Discussion Monkey See! Monkeys Can Be Taught To Recognize Themselves in a Mirror

[Shawn Hopkins]

Shawn Hopkins submitted a new blog post:

Monkey See! Monkeys Can Be Taught To Recognize Themselves in a Mirror

A human being knows that the image in the mirror is she. That's why we spend so much time staring into them. Great apes have a similar capacity for narcissism. Monkeys, however, don't make the connection between the monkey in the mirror and themselves.

But that doesn't mean they can't. Chinese scientists have shown they can train rhesus monkeys to recognize themselves in the mirror, by the simple expedient of annoying the crap out of them.

Although monkeys in previous experiments never...

Continue reading the Original Blog Post

 

[loonshine]

That's great! I remember when it was about monkey having humor...

I do like it when my animals don't get the reflection is them and they start acting weird. Makes for a more fun behaviour than just old human narcissism!

 

[mssbishi]

I'm not surprised they can do this. Great Apes are particularly intelligent and the orangutan is 97 per cent similar to humans, biologically!

 

[Kittyworker]

After watching Planet of the Apes I feel anyone is possible for our primal cousins. They say humans only use 20% of our brains, what happens when apes learn to use 30-40%? The movie doesn't sound too unlikely to happen in reality now does it?