Aug 18, 2017 04:51 AM
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ns/537219/
EXCERPT: [...] Gallup concluded that chimps could recognize their own reflections—a feat that “would seem to require a rather advanced form of intellect” and that “implies a concept of self.” [...] Consider the dogs. Dogs don’t groom each other to the same extent that apes do, so there’s no reason to expect that they would try to examine a mark on their heads. What’s more, the mirror test is a visual test, designed by visual animals (us) for other visual animals. Dogs see just fine, but they mainly live in a world of smell. If you want to know if they have a concept of self, it makes little sense to confront them with a mirror. You need to work in their world. A world of chemicals drifting through the air. A world that’s hard for us to imagine.
“Smell is so distant to our experience,” says Alexandra Horowitz from Barnard College. “We’re just not engaged with olfaction, so it’s taken a long time to see—or even imagine—what the world might be like for non-visual creatures, and to design experiments with that in mind.”
Marc Bekoff from the University of Colorado, Boulder, did just that with his own dog Jethro....
MORE: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ns/537219/
EXCERPT: [...] Gallup concluded that chimps could recognize their own reflections—a feat that “would seem to require a rather advanced form of intellect” and that “implies a concept of self.” [...] Consider the dogs. Dogs don’t groom each other to the same extent that apes do, so there’s no reason to expect that they would try to examine a mark on their heads. What’s more, the mirror test is a visual test, designed by visual animals (us) for other visual animals. Dogs see just fine, but they mainly live in a world of smell. If you want to know if they have a concept of self, it makes little sense to confront them with a mirror. You need to work in their world. A world of chemicals drifting through the air. A world that’s hard for us to imagine.
“Smell is so distant to our experience,” says Alexandra Horowitz from Barnard College. “We’re just not engaged with olfaction, so it’s taken a long time to see—or even imagine—what the world might be like for non-visual creatures, and to design experiments with that in mind.”
Marc Bekoff from the University of Colorado, Boulder, did just that with his own dog Jethro....
MORE: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...ns/537219/