Scientists Gave Antarctic Penguins a Mirror- Left Stunned When the Birds Exhibited Self-Awareness
Penguins are highly social birds and readily interact with external stimuli within their environments. Scientists have now deduced that penguins may possess self-awareness as the Antarctic natives were found examining themselves in a mirror. India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences conducted an experiment where scientists performed mirror tests with a dozen Adelie penguins in East Antarctica. It was done to discover the visual recognition abilities of penguins, if any, per a study published in the journal bioRxiv.
The experiment was headed by American psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. at the penguins’ natural environments for best observation in February 2020. Penguins generally move in groups, thus, even the experiment received a bountiful response from the flightless birds when a mirror was placed in their path. As per the theory, the penguins had ideally never come in contact with a mirror in their lives. The researchers wrote in the paper published in November 2022, “Presumably, the study individuals had neither undergone any kind of training nor had had any previous exposure to mirrors.”
The experts observed that several penguins stared at their mirror reflections while standing still for 10 minutes. They did not try to touch the mirror or even reach out to it besides gawking at their reflections momentarily. Although, it is possible that penguins may have encountered mirror-like reflections on ice or crystal-clear water melting from ice in Antarctica. To determine additional information about their self-awareness capabilities, the researchers conducted another similar experiment and built a cardboard enclosure on their path.
The cardboard enclosure barely caught the penguins’ attention as they carelessly bypassed it. However, after a mirror was placed inside the enclosure, the researchers explained that the penguins’ focus immediately shifted toward it. According to the study, the penguins stared intently while making rapid movements of their heads and other body parts. The experts deduced that the penguins did not consider the reflections as other individual penguins because they barely displayed any kind of physical reaction to the images.
“Our observation that the penguins stared intently at the simultaneous body movements…coupled with a singular lack of any kind of tactile reaching out or aggression directed towards the mirror images, suggested to us that the individuals possibly did not consider the images to represent other conspecific individuals,” the study interpreted. Interestingly, the penguins seemed irked after the scientists introduced a bright green sticker on the mirror that covered the image of their head and began pecking on it.
Additionally, the researchers explained the pecking as an attempt to remove the obstructive sticker to supposedly recover the images of their heads. “we speculate that such a behavioral motivation could indicate a restlessness that was expressed when they were unable to later see their faces in the mirror – a potential reflection of their underlying awareness of the self,” the researchers concluded. The fact that penguins recognize themselves in their reflections is still under question but the researchers confirmed that the birds likely possess a sense of self-identity.
They further suggested that such type of self-awareness “plays a critical role” during the communal activities and social interactions within the community of penguins. Self-awareness is among the most mysterious cognitive capabilities and is described as “arguably the most fundamental issue in psychology” in terms of both developmental and evolutionary perspectives, per a 2023 study. In addition to penguins, Orangutans are another breed of animals that have exhibited strong evidence for self-awareness in the mirror self-recognition (MSR) tests.