# The Mirror Trick To Measure Sentience



## faithless (Dec 4, 2009)

You all know the mirror trick, where they place a colored spot somewhere on the animal and then take him to a mirror to see it. If he cleans it or notices it on himself after seeing it in the mirror, he's showing self awareness.
Cats/dogs dont do this. 

I cant remember where I read it, perhaps here, but someone devised another trick, which was to dangle a piece of string above the cats head in front of the mirror and then without a mirror. The author of that article did so and the cat would look upwards at the string from seeing it above his head in the mirror but did not look up when the mirror was not there. This too should show that the cat made a relative geographic placement of the string in relation to its own position as seen in the mirror, hence an awareness of its mirrored image.
It worked for the author and it worked for me and a friend.

Try it. What conclusions should we draw?


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## marie73 (Jul 12, 2006)

> What conclusions should we draw?


They are laughing their furry butts off watching us trying to figure them out.


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## paperbacknovel (Jun 9, 2010)

marie73 said:


> They are laughing their furry butts off watching us trying to figure them out.


:lol


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## gunterkat (Aug 19, 2006)

:lol: :lol:
Arianwen purrs when I hold her up to a mirror, and if she sees a ruffled patch of fur in her reflection she'll groom the rough spot.
There are a lot of self-aware cats out there. The takover has begun. :cat


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## jusjim (Jun 30, 2009)

We are trained almost from birth to be aware of mirrors. To make a cat aware of itself in a mirror might take time starting from when it's kitten. I thought the one where the cat was supposed to see a spot on itself in a mirror was a stupid experiment possibly designed to show that cats aren't intelligent. I wonder what sort of experiment a cat would design to show how stupid we can be.

In any case, are not cat's eyes designed to see things differently from us?

If I were doing the experiment, I would start by pointing to the mirror and then to myself, and then to the cats image and then to the cat before I put the spot on. It would probably have taken time and lots of patience over that time.


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## Vivid Dawn (May 31, 2010)

In my apartment, half a wall is full-length mirrors, a good 10 feet or so long. Both my cats ignore mirrors. Walk right past, and don't even bother to glance over at the "other" cat walking with them.

(on the other hand, Paizly has sometimes been quite startled by her own shadow on the wall... it's kinda funny)


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## marie73 (Jul 12, 2006)

When I leave the house, Charlee runs over to the mirror by the front door and watches me leave in the mirror.


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## jusjim (Jun 30, 2009)

marie73 said:


> When I leave the house, Charlee runs over to the mirror by the front door and watches me leave in the mirror.


Now that's really interesting.


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## gunterkat (Aug 19, 2006)

jusjim said:


> Now that's really interesting.


And cool, too. Charlee is another smart kitty!


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