Mirror Self-Recognition in Magpies

By means of the mirror and mark test that is often used with human children and apes the authors show that Magpies take their mirror image for a reflection of their own body. These findings represent the first evidence of mirror self-recognition in a non-mammalian species and bear several major implications.

The phylogenetic lines of birds and mammals have gone through a separate evolutionary history for at least 300 million years. Up to now mirror-self recognition had only been shown in very few mammalian species like chimpanzees, orang-utans, elephants, and dolphins. Evidence for self-recognition in Magpies, therefore, provides particularly strong support that higher cognitive skills and consciousness developed independently in different evolutionary lines.

It has always been assumed that the neocortex is a prerequisite for higher cognition and consciousness. But birds have no neocortex and are endowed with a vastly different brain organization. Thus, the recent findings in Magpies show that even self-recognition is possible without a neocortex.

Media Contact

Prof. Dr. Onur Güntürkün alfa

More Information:

http://www.rub.de

All latest news from the category: Life Sciences and Chemistry

Articles and reports from the Life Sciences and chemistry area deal with applied and basic research into modern biology, chemistry and human medicine.

Valuable information can be found on a range of life sciences fields including bacteriology, biochemistry, bionics, bioinformatics, biophysics, biotechnology, genetics, geobotany, human biology, marine biology, microbiology, molecular biology, cellular biology, zoology, bioinorganic chemistry, microchemistry and environmental chemistry.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors