August 20, 2008

Magpies are aware…

…of themseleves:

Magpies are the first non-mammal to demonstrate a rudimentary affinity for self-recognition, psychologist Helmut Prior of Goethe University of Frankfurt in Germany and his colleagues report in the Aug. 19 PLoS Biology. Members of the corvid family, which includes crows and ravens, magpies join apes, bottlenose dolphins and elephants as the only animals other than humans that have been observed to understand that a mirror image belongs to their own body.

posted by in animals, science | * | 7 comments 

comments

  1. Deron Bauman on August 20th, 2008 at 2:24 pm

    beat me to it, Simone!

  2. Andrew Simone on August 20th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    It had to happen eventually.

  3. Sally Head on August 20th, 2008 at 2:56 pm

    What about men? Aren’t men at least somewhat aware of themselves?

  4. Deron Bauman on August 20th, 2008 at 3:30 pm

    you lost me.

  5. Sally Head on August 20th, 2008 at 7:43 pm

    oh. well, i mean, they’re not mammals, per se. but sometimes they do exhibit a touch of something.

    you know how they will occasionally look up from what they’re doing and peer about, as if just startled from a dream? if you look carefully at their eyes, just then, you could almost swear they have a sense of themselves…

  6. Deron Bauman on August 20th, 2008 at 8:59 pm

    I don’t get it.

  7. Aaron Winslow on August 21st, 2008 at 9:08 am

    I heard that one before. It was in a ‘Cathy’ cartoon. Classic.

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