Animals and their reflection

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Fluff, my pet cat has recently discovered his own reflection in puddles at the back the house and is spending hours pawing and sniffing, and leaping around, it looks like he is playing with the reflection. Cats and dogs self recognize through smell, but he seems to be enjoying it even though it isn't giving him 'real' feedback.
He is an outdoor cat so I don't know how he would react to an actual mirror image, but I'm thinking that since he was neutered recently he might be bored.

Got any animal & mirror stories to share?

It's considered a great cognitive advance for humans to be able to discern that the mirror image of themselves, indeed, is themselves. I've heard 15-18 months as the most quoted age for the attainment of this milestone.

My son has been enjoying his own reflection since he was a few months old. He's 16 months old and he can take a selfie on my phone. :/

Some of my cats have liked their reflections and some dogs. My pit bull seems embarrassed when he sees himself in the mirror- like someone is playing a joke on him.

Lol, very funny.



The mirror experiment showed that chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, elephants, dolphins, killer whales and magpies were capable of visual self recognition, but that its not an accurate way to measure self recognition in animals that rely more on their sense of smell and hearing, than on their sense of sight.

I thought Fluff would have tired of this game by now, his reactions are less dramatic than when he first discovered it; he sits beside the puddles, peering into them every so often then leaping into the air to pounce at his reflection.

I'm loving the frequent pages on Buzzfeed with titles like "When the Front Camera Comes On By Mistake".

There are usually like 25 pictures of pets reacting to seeing themselves in a cell phone camera. Of course they are all extreme close-ups and the startled look on the dog/cat faces are hysterical. The cats in particular react strongly. Those pages are one of the very few times I can fall into an out-loud belly laugh so hard that I can't catch my breath.

This one is my current favorite: Link to Cats and Front Facing Cameras

Yup those pics made me laugh out loud, cheers .



This compilation has a mixture of animals, they nearly all try to attack their reflection, some of the cat clips are very funny.

My previous cat used to snarl and jump at her reflection in the window just like the cat in the post above me, it was funny to see her.
My cat I have now hissed had her reflection at first but now she just looks at it.

Many animals merely think there is another animal staring at them, but there are several species of animal that are able to recognize themselves in a mirror and realize it's actually them and not another animal they are looking at. We're not alone in being able to do this.

Dolphins, elephants, chimps, and even birds such as the crow and the magpie have been found to show evidence that they realize their reflection is themselves, via experiments such as painting a mark on the animal and then observing that it sees it in the mirror and pecks or touches its own self to get at the spot, not the reflected spot. Dolphins have even "admired" themselves.

Thats interesting BirdInFlight, because self recognition was always linked to animals with a frontal lobe, but dolphins have a differently organised brain, which links self recognition with general characteristics like brain size and cognitive ability instead. Link

Such a cute video!

I think there is a lot about dolphins we don't even yet know; those brains of theirs also have highly developed "emotional centers" like ours, same with orcas. What we think we know about animals doesn't even scratch the surface, as more is discovered every day about what kind of inner lives they are capable of.

I forgot, even the common pigeon apparently "passes the mirror test" too. Pigeons are of a very high intelligence and researchers have found them also to be part of the handful of species who seem to recognize that it's "themselves" in the mirror. It's all really fascinating stuff.

my dog barks at her reflection on car doors when we walk sometimes.

she used to wake us up by barking at her reflection, on the dresser right across from her bed.

Lol, no one is gonna sneak up on her, funny dog, what type breed is she?

My cat Lucky sometimes sits up in front of mirrors or windows and rubs or scratches against her reflection with her paws. It's fun to watch although the sound of her claws against the glass is a little hard on the ears.

she's a poodle mix from tijuana, poodle mother and we have no idea who her daddy was.
she's been startled quite a few times before.

Yikes, I can imagine, not a good sound .
Fluff is an outdoor cat, when I was bringing him back from the vets after being neutered, he escaped (still dozy from the anesthetic) from the crate and tried to jump through the glass, poor thing, he had the 'dazed bird' experience, and I had a 'loose wild cat in a moving car' experience, though he didn't hurt me and I got to pull over quickly enough . The sound of his head banging into the glass was awful.
Oh they are cute, sometimes little dogs have to develop the tough guy attitude.