In hours of underwater video from a New York aquarium, a beluga whale named Natasha stretches her neck, pirouettes, nods and shakes her head in front of a two-sided mirror. His daughter Maris does more or less the same. According to a new study published in PLUS oneBoth animals show the behavioral characteristics of mirror self-recognition, a cognitive ability long considered a marker of self-awareness and never before documented in beluga whales.
If the result holds, the belugas will join a remarkably short list. The mirror self-recognition (MSR) test has been passed, with varying degrees of confidence, by humans (from around age two), a handful of great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and, somewhat controversially, gorillas), asian elephants, bottlenose dolphinsprobably magpieslikely killer whalesand, if you can believe it, a cleaner wrasse. That’s all. No dogs, no cats, no monkeys. Many species that we had assumed were self-aware have been tried and failed.
looking in the mirror
So what exactly is this test and what is it supposed to tell us?
The procedure is as follows: while the animal is not looking, researchers place a mark in a place that it can only see through a reflection. A mirror is then placed in front of the animal while the researchers watch. If the animal touches or examines the mark while looking at its reflection, it understands that the figure in the mirror is itself. The test is intuitive and easy to perform, and almost no species passes it.
Why is this a test of self-awareness in the first place? Logic, going back to psychologist Gordon Gallup (who invented the test in 1970), is that in order to use a mirror as a tool to inspect your own body, you need a mental representation of yourself as a distinct entity. According to this story, a piece of silver glass can open many cognitive doors.
