Barbelith Underground > Laboratory

I found a site that seemed well informed (we are on the net obviously) but it was suggested that a "high" level of intelligence is the ability to recognise that a reflection of yourself is yourself and not something else...

It should be noted that it is actually a test of conciousness not intelligence. As far as I am aware the original experiment involved marking a sleeping animal with a dye in a specific area and then seeing whether or not it directed grooming to that area after observing itself in the mirror (the idea being that an animal would have to have a concept of "self" in order to recognise that the reflection was of it rather than another animal).

There is also a certain amount of criticism of this particular experiment with regards to what it is supposed to be looking for.

From the wiki on Mirror Tests:

There is some debate in the scientific community as to the value and interpretation of results of the mirror test. While this test has been extensively conducted on primates, there is also debate as to the value of the test as applied to animals who rely primarily on senses other than vision, such as dogs. As dogs have very poor visual resolution and acuity with red/green blindness, they have little chance of recognizing themselves or a dot (commonly red) in a mirror. However, dogs do recognize their own scent invariably with 40x more neurons than humans dedicated to processing smell. The key point being that the mirror test is only a measure of ability closely matching humans, not a statement of Consciousness, as is popularly believed. Additionally, as mentioned with gorillas, many animals may regard eye contact as a threatening gesture, so the application of the mirror test is unclear. Some mammalian species do not have stereoscopic vision, including rabbits and deer, which may be a factor in determining the value of the test.

In animal cognition experiments it's important to try and avoid anthropomorphising the animal's responses. Ascribing human emotional states and human responses to a non-human creature creates an inaccurate interpretation of animal cognition.

Maybe they're learning some nasty bits of behaviour from their cousins Homo sapiens?

My problem with this statement is that it is a personal judgement of yours that this particular example of tool use is "nasty" or "bad", and enforces an inaccurate view of the peaceful lovable chimp being corrupted by teh evil humans. Bear in mind that chimps also hunt monkeys for their meat and tear them apart with their bare hands. Be careful of ascribing human morality to a non-human species.

Animal Intelligence