Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 3C5.
Proc Biol Sci. 2024 Apr 10;291(2020):20240125. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2024.0125. Epub 2024 Apr 3.
Mark tests, in which an animal uses a mirror to locate and examine an otherwise unnoticeable mark on its own body, are commonly used to assess self-recognition, which may have implications for self-awareness. Recently, several olfactory-reliant species have appeared to pass odour-based versions of the mark test, though it has never been attempted in reptiles. We conducted an odour-based mark test on two species of snakes, Eastern gartersnakes and ball pythons, with widely divergent ecologies (i.e. terrestrial foragers that communally brumate versus semi-arboreal ambush predators that do not). We find that gartersnakes, but not ball pythons, pass the test, and a range of control tests suggest this is based on self-recognition. Gartersnakes are more social than ball pythons, supporting recent suggestions that social species are more likely to self-recognize. These results open the door to examination of the ecology of self-recognition, and suggest that this ability may evolve in response to species-specific ecological challenges, some of which may align with complexity of social structures.
马克测试，即动物使用镜子来定位和检查自身原本无法注意到的标记，通常用于评估自我认知，这可能对自我意识具有重要意义。最近，几种嗅觉依赖的物种似乎通过了基于气味的马克测试版本，尽管在爬行动物中从未尝试过。我们对两种蛇类，东部束带蛇和球蟒，进行了基于气味的马克测试，它们具有截然不同的生态环境（即社群冬眠的陆生觅食者与不冬眠的半树栖伏击捕食者）。我们发现束带蛇通过了测试，而球蟒没有，一系列对照测试表明这是基于自我认知的。束带蛇比球蟒更具社会性，这支持了最近的观点，即社会性物种更有可能自我识别。这些结果为自我认知的生态学研究打开了大门，并表明这种能力可能是为了应对特定物种的生态挑战而进化的，其中一些挑战可能与社会结构的复杂性相吻合。
