This cat loafs as good as any person (all photos by me).
In 1970, psychiatrist Gordon Gallup Jr. proposed a method to help determine whether animals exhibit self-awareness. The subject is discreetly marked — sometimes while under anesthesia — then given a mirror (hence, the test’s name). If it fiddles with the mark, this suggests that it recognizes itself in the reflection.
As with all attempts to answer existential questions, the mirror test (also called the mirror self-recognition [MSR] test) is not without its critics or controversies. An important question raised is whether “mirrors can uncover latent self-awareness or even teach it.” Another is whether such tests simply train animals to respond to certain stimuli, and their responses are misperceived by the human researchers as some kind of higher level consciousness.
But, what if there was no attempt to influence an animal in any way (she wasn’t purposely marked for testing, or even intentionally tested), yet she looked in a reflection and reacted to a mark with willful intent. Would this suggest she exhibited self-awareness?
Here’s what happened
One night, my cat Beatrice and I were watching television in a dimly lit room. (For those of an ‘advanced’ age reading this, she reminds me of Bea Arthur; for the rest of you, watch the Golden Girls). My PC sits on a table directly beneath the tv. The side of the tower that faces away from the tv, toward the sitting area of the room, is reflective glass. When Bea lost interest in the programming, she started staring at her reflection in the computer’s exterior.
At first, she acted as she does when the occasional stray climbs onto the windowsill outside. She was cautiously curious, her body in a posture ready to fight or flee. For long moments she stared, unmoving, but nothing happened (of course). Still curious, she slowly crept closer — move a little, stop. Move a little, stop. The ‘other’ cat did the same.
When her nose nearly touched the surface, face-to-face with her likeness, her demeanor relaxed. Now it was all curiosity; no caution. First she tilted her head to each side. Next, she tapped the glass. I could tell from her open mouth that she was searching for any clue from all of her senses as to what this phantasm was that stood before her. (Cats can detect pheromones and other chemicals through something called the Jacobson’s organ, located on the roof of their mouths.)
Then, she did something I did not expect. She pawed at the collar in the reflection, then at the real one she wears. It has a bell hanging from it, so her prodding caused it to ring (not merely from moving, but when her paw actually made contact with the metal). She repeated this sequence several times: touch the reflective surface; touch the bell. Tap, ring, repeat.
Notably, I paused the stream to ensure that she was not reacting to the audio, video, or its oscillating ambient light. Stopping it did not alter her behavior.
Beatrice, the hunter… look closely, she’s there.
She knows about the bell
Beatrice’s conduct intrigued me for two reasons. First, she appeared to correlate the image of the collar bell with the real one. I don’t know whether that reflected self-awareness, but it certainly indicated that she understood the spatial parallel of the real-world and reflected objects. In other words, she knew the ringer dangling from her neck was in the same position on her as the one on the ‘cat’ in front of her.
That alone was astonishing.
Second, she tried to ring the bell in the reflection with her paw, and each time that failed, she rang the real bell the same way. This was made more interesting by the fact that she already knew what it does.
Let me explain.
Beatrice lives with me because someone abandoned her, despite our often frigid winters. When I initially brought her into my home, there was a transition period during which she went outside each day at times and for the duration of her own choosing. Even though I knew life would be better for her inside, I did not want her to feel imprisoned.
I put an audible device on her collar so I would know when she came and went. (These days, she generally refuses to go outdoors, but she still wears the bell). Observing her forays back into the wild, I noticed that she adapted to carrying around this new noisemaker.
Cats are insatiable hunters, and adopting Bea did not ‘domesticate’ her out of the addiction. By creating a way to notify me of her comings and goings, I effectively impeded her ability to approach her targets silently. That dastardly dinger foiled more than a few hunts.
Over time, she changed the way she moved her body while stalking to quiet the bell as she closed in on unwitting birds or mice. Put another way, she learned to creep, sprint, and even jump without making a single jingle!
It was remarkable. She knew the bell was giving her away and devised a work-around. And the results proved the concept… much to my chagrin. Before long, I once again suffered the unfortunate task of routinely disposing her ‘gifts’ of decapitated forest creatures.
Thus, when she stood before the ‘mirror’, she harbored a specific expectation when she attempted to ring the holographic bell. When that expectation was not met, she seemed to reconfirm it by ringing the real bell. Though I can’t say it with certainty, I think she expressed genuine confusion that she could ring one bell, but not the other.
If I am wrong, it is difficult to imagine what else motivated her repeated attempts.
Self aware?
Employing the scientific method is crucial to solving mysteries like this, and I hold a significant amount of skepticism toward any strong, but unsubstantiated ‘feeling’ on an issue. Indeed, I once engaged in a careful experiment to determine the best way to remove snow from my driveway.
That said, it is both fun and important to speculate on certain questions. Healthy speculation has provided the foundation for many significant scientific breakthroughs.
I am fascinated by animals, and especially captivated by this question of self-awareness or consciousness. In my home, there are currently two resident cats and several other nonhumans. At work, I am in close proximity to hundreds of species — both wild and domestic. All exhibit behaviors that, to me, reflect far more complex thought than many humans tend to give them credit for.
Are they hamming for the camera? (FYI, these are not the resident cats in my home.)
What constitutes self-awareness or consciousness has become an increasingly popular topic of late as people ponder its implications related to AI. I have ruminated on the subject myself; see here for an example. But perhaps that is premature.
We are surrounded by creatures that engage in behaviors parallel to our own — such as advanced language or even tv programming preferences — yet, for some reason we still cannot agree on whether they are self-aware or even conscious (to some extent, anyway). It is almost silly to ignore all that to focus so heavily on LLMs or other AI. (But it is, nevertheless, fun).
Our conception of self-awareness or consciousness has massive implications for how we coexist with all other entities, whether biological or cybertronic. The trajectory of this human attitude may decide if the future will be u- or dys- topian because, whether we like it or not, we depend on ecological balance for our well-being.
Right now, it seems that we treat coexistence as an economic problem rather than a moral or philosophical consideration. It is for this reason that many conservation efforts strive to achieve economic ends as part of the larger goal of saving endangered animals. I fear this characterization and subsequent approach may prove our undoing.
But I digress.
The original question was: did Beatrice prove she is self-aware?
The (perhaps unsatisfying) answer is: I don’t know.
What I do know is that she proved — and has proved time-and-time-again — that she is a thinking, feeling creature. There is considerable debate on how to define or identify self-awareness or consciousness, so maybe establishing whether an animal has it is a moot point. Given that human children tend to fail the mirror test as often as most animals do, should we act as callously toward them as many people act toward animals?
I do know the answer to that, but it is the wrong question.