Roosters Recognize Themselves in Mirror: Breaking the Stereotype of Low Intelligence

2023-10-26 05:14:30

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Experiment using the rooster’s instinct to crow when a predator appears
When I’m with colleagues, the warning sound… Be quiet when around the mirror

A study found that roosters also recognize their own reflection in the mirror. Provided by Sonya Hillemacher

Recognizing yourself in the mirror may seem easy, but it’s not that simple. The ‘mirror experiment’, in which animals recognize themselves in a mirror, has become an important standard for determining whether animals have the ability to recognize themselves. Until now, only a few animals, including apes such as chimpanzees and bonobos, elephants, dolphins, magpies, and Adélie penguins, have recognized themselves in the mirror. Now it seems that chickens, which have long been prejudiced as animals with low intelligence, should be added to this list. Recently, Dr. Sonya Hillemacher and her research team at the University of Bonn, Germany, conducted a mirror self-recognition experiment on roosters, and found that roosters also distinguished themselves from their peers and showed behavior to understand that the image reflected in the mirror was themselves. The researchers said, “When hawks or other predators appear in the sky, roosters crow to alert their comrades. “In an experiment using this behavior, the rooster made a warning sound when around other chickens, but did not make a sound when it saw its own reflection in the mirror.” The research results were published in the online open academic journal ‘PLOS One’ on the 25th (local time). The researchers ran two versions of the experiment. The first was a traditional mirror self-recognition experiment, a ‘mark test’ in which a chicken’s body was marked with pink powder and it was seen whether the chicken recognized the mark in a mirror. The second was an ‘audience test’ in which a rooster was placed in an experimental space with other chickens or alone, and a mirror was added to the partition to observe behavior. The reason the researchers conducted a different version of the experiment was because of the opinion that the existing mirror self-recognition experiment may produce different results depending on the animal’s habits. Since the mirror self-recognition experiment was developed by psychologist Gordon Gallup in the 1970s, it has been considered the most authoritative experiment to determine whether animals are self-conscious, but in the past 10 years, there has been controversy over the variable results of the experiment.

Researchers conducted an experiment under four conditions (A, B, C, D) to test whether roosters were self-aware. (Left) We used the rooster’s habit of alerting its surroundings when a predator appears to determine whether it can distinguish between its companions and itself in the mirror. On the right is the number of times the rooster made a warning sound in each condition. Provided by Sonya Hillemacher

Regarding conducting the two types of experiments, Dr. Sonya Hillemacher said, “I thought that the reason animals do not respond to the marks is not because they do not recognize themselves, but because they have little natural motivation to recognize the marks. Therefore, we thought we might obtain more reliable results if we experimented with behaviors related to the animals’ daily lives,” he told the science journal New Scientist. The results showed that the roosters failed the classic mirror test. Unlike chimpanzees, the roosters did not pay attention to or try to touch the pink dots on their chests. However, in the ‘audience test’, which introduced a more familiar situation, people recognized the image in the mirror as themselves. To test the audience, the researchers divided the middle of the laboratory with a wire mesh and placed each animal under four conditions: △ alone, △ there is a mirror in the partition, △ a fellow rooster in the next cubicle, △ a mirror and other roosters as well. An experiment was conducted. And in each condition, a hawk’s shadow was projected into the air to mimic the threat of a predator. Using the instinct to notify people around when a predator appears, they were able to determine whether the image reflected in the mirror was themselves or a colleague. Sixty-eight roosters, one each, were placed in the experimental space, and each bird was given approximately 60 minutes of adaptation time to become accustomed to the experimental environment.

Roosters crowed to signal danger when other chickens were in the next room, but they crowed less when they were alone or when they saw their reflection in the mirror. Getty Image Bank

As a result, the roosters crowed to signal danger when other chickens were in the next stall, but they crowed much less often when they were alone or when they saw themselves reflected in a mirror. There was no significant difference in the number of times the child cried when alone and when there was a mirror. There was another rooster, but even when the view was blocked by a mirror, the chickens tended not to crow. The researchers said that this behavior means that the rooster does not see its reflection in the mirror as another rooster, and that it shows that chickens sense each other through sight, not hearing or smell. “This study provides strong evidence for self-recognition in chickens,” said Dr. Masanori Koda, a biologist at Osaka Public University in Japan who was not involved in the study. “If ecological behaviors of animals, such as chicken cries, are more actively used in self-awareness research, more accurate experiments will likely be possible in the future,” he told the New York Times. Cited paper: Plos One, DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0291416 Reporter Kim Ji-sook [email protected]
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