The Republicans are on to something. Elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror, joining only humans, apes and dolphins as animals that possess this kind of self-awareness, researchers now report.
Happy, a 34-year-old Asian elephant at the Bronx Zoo, faced her reflection in an 8-by-8-foot mirror in a 2005 experiment and repeatedly used her trunk to touch an "X" painted above her eye. She could not have seen the mark except in her reflection. And she did not respond to a similar mark above her other eye that was invisible except under a black light.
"This would seem to be a trait common to and independently evolved by animals with large, complex brains, complex social lives and known capacities for empathy and altruism, even though the animals all have very different kinds of brains," researcher Diana Reiss, a senior cognitive research scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society. Could this include compassionate conservatism?
Hopefully, she added, this will encourage people to protect elephants. No similar research has been reported on donkeys.
Source: Livescience.com
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