According to wiki only a handful of animals pass the self aware test. Some apes, elephants, bottle nose dolphins and one species of bird. The test is typically done by putting a spot on the animal and then putting them in front of a mirror to see if they notice the spot that is on them. The theory goes that if they recognize themselves in the mirror then they are self aware. If they don't recognize themselves then they are not self aware. Human babies acquire this capability around 18 months.

Many dog owners, myself included, challenge this idea based on our experience of living with them.

I just watched a video of a dog trying to save another dog that was hit by a car that not only warmed my heart, but pretty much confirmed for me that dogs operate at a higher level, and perhaps they are self aware to an extent. Perhaps the way we test for self awareness needs updating?

Here is the video.

https://www.youtube.com/...bedded&v=_nkadPBEKFk

What do others think?

Could this just be as simple as instinct or is this a clear display of a higher level of awareness...perhaps self awareness?

I've seen the video before...and I sure don't want to watch it again.... too sad for me.

I think the contents can be explained by the other dog's "awareness" that traffic is "threatening" or "dangerous" and wanting to withdraw it's wounded buddy away from that. That's no cognitive difference between that and a mother animal drawing its offspring away from danger.

But I do think that science has TERRIBLY underplayed the intelligence of animals. It's my opinion that just because animals don't have complex language (and thus complex concepts) doesn't mean they don't FEEL very much as we do, in terms of emotion/general awareness and "context" within their world/societies.

kicked this around several times.....
it likely comes down to prefrontal cortex.

apes, dogs, dolphins...not even giraffes.. have one.
I observe that most animals rely heavily on instinct, and little else.

Benzyme how would you reconcile the magpie bird with this theory?

From the wiki: Recent studies from the Goethe University Frankfurt show that magpies may also possess self-awareness.[13] Common speculation suggests that some other animals may be self-aware.[15]

Also, I'm curious, do we know for sure self awareness is determined by the pre frontal cortex? I ask because I honestly don't know.

I won't challenge the current ranking because based on the mirror test it seems pretty reasonable. I guess I'm just questioning if that test is the best test?

An example I just tested: I have two cats. One is 19 and she literally hates other cats. Can't walk by our other cat without growling and hissing...24 hours a day. Friendly as she can be to all humans and other animals, but will freak out at the sight or smell of another cat. I put her in front of the mirror and she gets curious...and not violent. If she thought the reflection was another cat then I would say this was quite odd behavior for her. This could be explained by other factors for sure, but it could also be explained by her recognizing herself in the mirror and not growling.... Of course this cat is about as weird of a creature as I have ever known so I'd feel uncomfortable drawing any conclusions or even drafting a hypothesis around her...she will get in a running shower after all!

To Swims point, animal intelligence is very broad. I've had dogs that were as smart as rocks, and I've had dogs that were a couple notches above the average at least. I agree that animal intelligence is grossly underestimated on the whole. I mean how smart would the average human be if we weren't schooled for the majority of our young lives? Wonder how much smarter the average animal would be if they all spent 5 years in obedience/training school? Hell I wonder, could a dog be taught to recognize itself in a mirror and pass the current test for self awareness?

Not to bring up other threads here, but endless keep pushing if there were levels of self awareness in the hawking thread....if there are could an animal be taught to recognize itself in a mirror and pass the current self aware test? hum... I admit to having done very little research in this area and I'm only posing questions that are interesting to my slightly inebriated mind hehe...

I have a million stories about how smart my dogs are (I have two dobes). But here's one that I like the best, because it flies in the face of "standard" animal training theory, that says rewards must be immediately associated with commands, in order to teach the behavior: My dogs SOMEHOW learned to associate me calling for a PIZZA, with the idea that they should start getting excited and looking out the window for the pizza delivery guy in fifteen or twenty minutes. They could TELL somehow from my conversation, that in THAT conversation, I was ordering a pizza! I swear!

I used to test it after I started to notice it. I would put real effort into controlling my actions, and not signal that I was expecting a delivery. Somehow, totally without me even TRYING to teach them, not only did they associate me making a phone call with a pizza delivery twenty minutes later, they associated PARTICULAR PHONE CALLS. Since I sometimes ordered different toppings, they didn't memorize actual words I don't think. I think instead they recognized a certain tone of voice. Still, the fact that they came on their own to associate it with an event occurring TWENTY MINUTES LATER is COMPLETELY CONTRARY to standard "behavior theory."

Note: Now it certainly might be true that, as they were learning, I myself might have gone to the window if I heard a sound, to see if it was the pizza man. Maybe that's how they caught on. Still, they PERFORMED IT after they learned it, WITHOUT me giving any cue at all except the phone call--and they learned it without me even being AWARE of it, or with trying to teach them in any way.

Whether or not my dog is self-aware, he is my best friend, and tends to exhibit more qualities of a good human than most people I know. Coming home to his wagging tail never gets old!

I would be curious in how you define instinct. Does emotion count?



This is classical conditioning, based on Pavlov's dog saliva experiments. Dogs (and other "smarter" creatures) can basically cognitively connect any action with anything else. This is how you learn to use your environment to form your actions. By contrast, when you're talking about animal training theory, they mostly employ operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is required when you want to use shaping to get an animal to do something complex by breaking into smaller steps.

Please don't get me wrong, I don't mean to diminish your dog's behavior. I agree with you totally that science has underplayed the intelligence of animals. Just some insight into how psychology labels these things.

let's assume that said animals have an amygdala and nucleus accumbens (which they more than likely have)..then yes, instinct would include fear and pleasure as motives.

but other emotions like embarassment, jealousy, pity, contempt...those are all subject to debate.

Let's leave out all the tech - they seem to have a program which tells them to support their species

Dogs definitely have social awareness. They organize themselves into long lasting hierarchical social arrangements. Luckily, us humans can be included into these little societies.

It seems to me like social awareness would require self awareness. (Dogs don't just know who is the alpha, they also know their own position relative to the rest of the pack.) This is kind of a weak argument though.

It's always hard to address these kinds of questions. Since we can't directly talk to animals we need good behavioral tests. Unfortunately, since we can't talk to animals we can never really know how good our behavioral tests are. Debates over the usefullness of different behavioral experiments have been raging non-stop for over 100 years.

I used to constantly try to make my cat question existence... guess you really never know if it gets through

I've seen lots of dogs get embarrassed by their farts... Self conscious dogs... Lol

No. It's exactly NOT classical conditioning. Classical conditioning simply CANNOT ABIDE a twenty minute lapse between stimulus and reward. That's what makes the phenomenon interesting: it is NOTHING like classical conditioning.

Ayahuasca has helped me tremendously with overcoming this, but having worked some of my jobs in a specific industry, there have been times when I found myself struggling to believe that humans generally possessed any self-awareness at all. Unless, by self-awareness, of course, you mean vanity. (I have some neighbors down the street that are CRANKING a stereo well past a decent noise bylaw hour as we speak. ) In my dark days... the cynical days... the days before I drank the light and needed MAOI.

There is a value in having one's awareness connected to a greater whole, and it's absolutely beautiful, psychedelics have taught. Nothing vulgar or base at all, animals are actually very quite intelligent, albeit in a way that doesn't instantly mesh with the rational mind.

And look at advertising, how easily humans are manipulated with instinct! Food, sex, well, that's all instinct, right?

Not to knock our capacity to do great things, I'm just raising some questions to test the boundaries of preconceived notions. Sometimes animals are underrated and our own perspective can get admittedly narrow.

This is also why spice is a gift. I'll never, ever forget the first moment I drank Ayahuasca, felt the sentience in the earth all around me, and realized the PROFOUND implications... The trees CAN talk.

Or, so, maybe I should phrase the question, what about beyond-self-awareness? Meta-self awareness? At times, even our inter-cultural awareness is sorely lacking. I just think there's so much for us all to learn, about who we are and the AMAZING things we can do!

With love. <3 (NOT misanthropy!!)

as the companion and friend of 2 dogs, 2 cats and an umbrella cockatoo I can tell you they have a full range of emotion save a few , I dunno if they are self aware though.

have you guys ever offered ayahuasca or shrooms to your doggies??

-JOKING ASIDE, what a beautiful, enlightening u tube vid -Woof!!

Unless we can first define self-awareness, we cannot even say wether humans are self aware.
Aware of your own existance?(Could a being not be aware of it's own existance be, without being a zombie-like creature?)
Aware of your own internal & external behaviour? That's the way I would interpret "self-aware" and it seems to correlate with the
Buddhist term "mindfullness".

And then another question; Can we really generalise one species and then label them either self-aware or not?
I think that far too many people are HORRIBLY unaware of their own thought/emotion-patterns and behaviour towards others. These people aren't self-aware by my defenition.
Some people are. So we can say that SOME of our species are self-aware, but we cannot claim Mankind as a whole to be self-aware.

It seems sensible to me the same is the case with all other animal species. We cannot label entire species as either self-aware or not, just like we
cannot generalise human races and then attribute certain characteristics to certain races. Each being is to be evaluated individually.

Furthermore I also think there are an infinity of degrees as to how self-aware a being can be. Not just either self-aware or not.

I'm sorry but this simply isn't true. I won't claim to know what the upper time limit is, but it's fairly easy to create a time lapse between stimulus and reward by creating successive stimuli that lead to the same place. So for example with Pavlov's dogs: after creating a link between the ringing of the bell and the serving of food what researchers noticed was that if the test was performed enough they didn't even need to ring the bell anymore to get the dogs to salivate; simply getting out the box with the bells in it created the effect. Then after a while the dogs started to salivate right as the experimenters entered the room. And if it was done enough times the dogs would salivate as they heard researchers approaching down the hall, before they were even in eye sight. That's not immediate reward but it's still classical conditioning.

This is the thing for me. I've always assumed it was on a gradient, like most things.

Yes, once a link is created many things can be accomplished. But links aren't made with twenty minute lapses between key elements!

A dog which doesn't speak "pizza ordering English" simply should have no way to connect a pizza-ordering phone call to a pizza delivery twenty minutes later IN FAVOR OF a chit-chat phone call. The connection between those events is obviously made by a "higher level" of cogitation beyond "conditioning."