Pets and mirrors

[Lester]

I have a cat and a dog and neither take any notice of mirrors. Even when I use signals to make my dog sit through the mirror, she pays no attention. yet I've seen videos of dogs and cats looking at reflected images and reacting.

Are my pets cleverer than others, so they understand that they're not "other animals" or are they just dumb?

 

[Trem]

No mate just blind.

 

[old.user4556]

I tried this with my ex's cat, it never took any notice of itself in the mirror.

I've wondered about this in the past, i've seen clips on the web of some cats going mad at their reflection.

 

[tris-]

No mate just blind.

rofl

 

[Trebz]

Most pets ignore it, the ones you see on the interweb are the insane pets.

 

[KevinUK]

My cat freaked out once and started hissing and ran off, it was like a 10cm radius mirror. It sees wardrobe mirrors every day and doesnt mind

 

[old.Tohtori]

It depends on the way a pet reacts to other pets in general.

This coming from many factors, such as how familiar they were with other animals when growing up and so on.

If i do remember correctly, it was "proven" that animals see reflections as other animals, the reaction is individual though.

But this may be just a load of bull alltogether.

 

[Furr]

Mirrors and animals are used to test to see if an animal is self aware.

For more info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test

 

[TdC]

Pigeons can remember large numbers of individual images for a long time, e.g. hundreds of images for periods of several years.

that's amazing!

 

[WPKenny]

Ooh. Spooky timing on the thread!

I was playing with a mirror and my cat just last night. From what I can tell it seems to think that the mirror is a tunnel or portal and the the cat it sees in the mirror is in the tunnel/portal and not itself.

It would look at itself and then jump around the mirror to see the other side. Not in a batshit kind of way just general curiosity.