Shorland Gladez, Genty Emilie, Guéry Jean-Pascal, Zuberbühler Klaus
Department of Comparative Cognition, Institute of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Institute of Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
PeerJ. 2020 Aug 28;8:e9685. doi: 10.7717/peerj.9685. eCollection 2020.
The question of whether animals have some sort of self-awareness is a topic of continued debate. A necessary precondition for self-awareness is the ability to visually discriminate the self from others, which has traditionally been investigated through mirror self-recognition experiments. Although great apes generally pass such experiments, interpretations of results have remained controversial. The aim of this study was to investigate how bonobos () respond to different types of images of themselves and others, both before and after prolonged mirror exposure. We first presented presumably mirror-naive subjects with representations of themselves in three different ways (mirror image, contingent and non-contingent video footage) as well as representations of others (video footage of known and unknown conspecifics). We found that subjects paid significantly less attention to contingent images of themselves (mirror image, video footage) than to non-contingent images of themselves and unfamiliar individuals, suggesting they perceived the non-contingent self-images as novel. We then provided subjects with three months of access to a large mirror centrally positioned in the enclosure. Following this manipulation, subjects showed significantly reduced interest in the non-contingent self-images, while interest in unknown individuals remained unchanged, suggesting that the mirror experience has led to a fuller understanding of their own self. We discuss implications of this preliminary investigation for the on-going debate on self-awareness in animals.
动物是否具有某种自我意识的问题一直是持续争论的话题。自我意识的一个必要前提是能够从视觉上区分自我与他人，传统上是通过镜像自我识别实验对此进行研究的。尽管大猩猩通常能通过这类实验，但对结果的解释仍存在争议。本研究的目的是调查倭黑猩猩在长时间接触镜子前后，对自己和他人不同类型图像的反应。我们首先以三种不同方式（镜像、伴随性和非伴随性视频片段）向可能从未接触过镜子的受试者展示他们自己的图像，以及他人的图像（已知和未知同种个体的视频片段）。我们发现，受试者对自己的伴随性图像（镜像、视频片段）的关注明显少于对自己和陌生个体的非伴随性图像的关注，这表明他们将非伴随性自我图像视为新颖的。然后，我们让受试者在三个月内可以接触到放置在圈舍中央的一面大镜子。经过这种处理后，受试者对非伴随性自我图像的兴趣显著降低，而对陌生个体的兴趣保持不变，这表明镜子体验使它们对自己有了更全面的认识。我们讨论了这项初步调查对正在进行的关于动物自我意识的争论的影响。
