Mirror Test

The mirror test measures animal self-awareness. To pass, a creature must recognise itself in a mirror. Only 13 species, including humans, have so far.

In the test, scientists place a coloured mark on an animal’s forehead and put it in front of a mirror. Some animals ignore the mirror, others consider it a different creature. A small few will adjust themselves while looking in the mirror and try to remove the mark. Such a response indicates they know the creature in the mirror is them, and act accordingly. 

Gordon Gallup Jr. invented the test in 1970. He put chimpanzees in a room with a mirror. At first, they threatened their reflection but, after a time, started grooming and pulling faces. When Gallup put a red mark on one ear then removed the mirror, the chimpanzees continued to scratch and touch that ear. The test proves animal self-recognition and suggests self-awareness.

 Animals that have passed:

• humans
• chimpanzees
• bonobos
• orangutans
• gorillas
• bottlenose dolphins
• orcas
• Asian elephants
• Eurasian Magpies
• pigeons
• cleaner wrasses (a tropical reef cleaner fish)

Most gorillas fail the test. Eye contact is threatening for gorillas, so they may deliberately avoid looking at the mirror for long enough to recognise themselves.

Only one elephant, an Asian elephant in 2006 at Bronx Zoo, identified the X on its forehead after looking in a mirror. Elephant cognition evolved on a similar path to primates. 

Magpies pass every time. The corvid family, which includes ravens and crows, have the same brain-body ratio as primates. While Eurasian magpies are among the most intelligent animals on the planet, their intelligence evolved from a different source than humans and primates. 

In 1980, behavioural psychologist BF Skinner found pigeons could pass the test after extensive, scaffolded training. Untrained pigeons do not.

Human babies do not pass the test until between 12 and 24 months old. Studies show a discrepancy across different environments.

What do these creatures have in common? Animals that pass the test have a high body-brain ratio, advanced perception and cooperative social structures. 

The mirror test is not the only indicator of self-awareness. Dogs, for example, rely on scent, so instantly discount any image from being them because of the lack of associated smell. That doesn’t mean they are necessarily self-aware, but if they were, a mirror-test wouldn’t tell you.

Without self-recognition, however, there cannot be self-awareness. Distinguishing the animals who pass from their peers is a significant step in unravelling the mystery of consciousness.

Sources: Animal Cognition, Brittanica, Science Daily.

Magic and Religion

According to The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer, humans understand the natural world through science, religion and magic. Before the Scientific Revolution, the latter two were the lenses through which most saw existance. 

Magic is the belief that one can influence the natural world through ritual and incantation. Like science, it assumes an immutable natural law; unlike science, it reaches such conclusions through received wisdom rather than investigation. By working within these laws, a magic-user can harness invisible forces to manipulate matter from a distance. Such belief systems were once universal and still existed in Frazer’s time. Superstitions and taboos persist to this day.

There are two types of magic: homoeopathic and contagious.

Homoeopathic magic assumes that an effect will always resemble its cause – the Law of Similarity. Ruthenian burglars used to throw human bones over a house to induce its inhabitants into a deathlike sleep. While fighting, Malagasy soldiers avoided eating animals killed by spears for fear they would share their fate. Effigies and voodoo dolls use homoeopathic magic.

Contagious magic assumes invisible forces bind things that were once a part of one another. By stabbing a person’s footprints, for example, one could harm their feet. People put baby teeth by mouse holes so new ones would be strong as a mouse’s. One could hurt a person by burning or beating their garments. In many cultures, a placenta’s resting place determined its owner’s fate.

 ‘The fatal flaw of magic’, writes Frazer ‘lies not in its general assumption of a sequence of events determined by law, but in its total misconception of the nature of the particular laws which govern that sequence.’ Belief in magic held because there was no way to refute it. If a rain dance, or a killing curse, appears to fail, for example, a magician needs only wait for the inevitable as proof. Such was the reverence and fear of magic, few were willing to refute it.

Many societies believed magic works through an invisible spiritual world. Spirits of nature and the dead can be manipulated or compelled to do one’s bidding through spells and ritual. Ancient Egyptian sorcerers claimed to manipulate the gods themselves to do their will. 

As human societies grew larger and more complicated, so too did their understanding of the world. Rather than see themselves as the centre of the universe, able to manipulate it to their will, they realised human futility and recognised the spirits as not merely magical, but all-powerful and divine. Thus religion superseded magic.

Religion is the belief in a higher spiritual power which humans can call on through prayer, sacrifice or conciliation. While magic imposes human will on the divine, religion supplicates oneself to it. People can gain supernatural aid not through coercion or spells, but by seeking divine favour. Christianity, in particular, claims the divine is all-powerful and above human whims, making magic antithetical. Pagan deities were cast out as demons or assimilated as saints. The Aztec Empire believed the sun would not rise unless they sacrificed human hearts to Huitzilopochtli.

Religion and magic often intertwined. When praying for rain failed, Cypriot and Siamese peasants cast holy icons into the sunshine to punish them for not heeding their calls. Exposure to harsh sunlight forced the saint or spirit to call the rain. French peasants believed certain priests could perform the mass of Saint Sécaire, a forbidden ritual which compelled the Holy Spirit to kill a designated person.

Science and magic share a belief in natural law. Thus, in Europe, it was not theology but alchemy and Rennaisance magic which made way for the Scientific Revolution. 

‘Its fundamental conception is identical with that of modern science; underlying the whole system is a faith, implicit but real and firm, in the order and uniformity of nature.’

Sources: Sir James Frazer – The Golden Bough (1890)

See Also:

• Were We Better off as Hunter-Gatherers?
• Folklore of the Orkney Islands
• Rule of Three
• Green Eyed Devils
• Clairvius Narcisse and the Zombies of Haiti

Carnivorans

Order Carnivora (coined 1821) is a biological classification including many species of mammals. Despite its name, which means ‘flesh devourers’ in Latin, not all ‘carnivorans’ are ‘carnivores’. Many are omnivorous, while some eat only plants. In terms of biological classification, it is an ‘order’, below class (mammals), and above family, species and subspecies. Their last common ancestor was a pangolin like creature who lived over 60 million years ago in the supercontinent of Laurasia.  

Carnivorans often have thick fur, sharp teeth and higher than average intelligence. Their adaptability allowed them to thrive when other creatures went extinct. Carnivorans are native to every continent except Australasia and the Antarctic and often fill the role of the apex predator. Some live strictly on land, others at sea, some – like otters – live on both.

Carnivora has two suborders – Feliforma and Carniforma, to which cats and dogs belong respectively. They branched off 42 million years ago.

A bull Elephant seal, the largest carnivoran species.

Caniforma encompasses those mammals with irretractable claws, long snouts and sharp teeth, and seals. Most eat meat. Some, like bears, are omnivores, some like pandas, are herbivores. Caniforms, whose name means ‘dog-like predators’ first evolved from a small marten-like creature who climbed trees and hunted in the forests of North America. 40 million years ago, some caniforms took to the sea and evolved fins in the place of paws, becoming the first seals. Caniforma’s families include:

• Canidae (wolves, dogs, coyotes, jackals, foxes etc)
• Ursidae (bears, including the giant panda)
• Mephitidae (skunks and stink badgers)
• Ailuridae (red pandas)
• Procynodae (raccoons, coatis and kinkajous)
• Mustelidae (weasels, badgers, otters, martens etc)
• Phocidae (earless seals)
• Otariidae (eared seals, including sea lions)
• Obobenidae (walruses)

A fossa, a Euplirid found only in Madagascar.

Feliforma means ‘cat-like predators’. Its species are lither and have shorter snouts and fewer teeth than caniforms, better eyesight than smell and retractable claws. Feliforma evolved in the Old World and today most species live in the tropics of Africa and Southeast Asia. Many of its branches are now extinct. Those that remain include:

• Felidae (cats big and small)
• Nandiniidae (African palm civets)
• Prionodontidae (Asiatic linsangs)
• Viverridae (civets, genets and oyans)
• Hyenidae (Hyenas and aardwolves)
• Herspitidae (mongooses and meerkats)
• Eupliridae (Fossa and Malagasy mongooses)

Humans, by the way, belong to a different order entirely. As members of the primate family, we are more closely related to rodents and marsupials than any creature in the order Carnivora. 

Sources: Encyclopaedia Brittanica, New Illustrated Animal Kingdom Volume 4

See Also:

• Bears

Population Y

Population Y is a proposed ‘ghost population’ who may have inhabited South America before Palaeo-Indians crossed the Bering Landbridge 15,000 years ago. Unlike Native Americans, whose ancestors came from Siberia, Population Y was more closely related to Melanesians and Australian Aborigines. Slim evidence lies in ancient bones and modern DNA.

The prevailing narrative is Native Americans share a common origin. 15,000 years ago humans from Siberia crossed a land bridge spanning the Bering Strait. As the Ice Sheets melted, their descendants dispersed across the continent and became the indigenous peoples of America – everyone from the Incas to the Algonquin. In 2012 Harvard scientists sequenced genomes from 52 indigenous groups and concluded they shared common DNA with this founder group – represented in the mDNA haplogroups A, C, D and N.

However they may not have been the first.

In 1973 scientists discovered a 13,000 year-old skeleton in a cave at Lagoa Santa, Brazil. The ‘Luzia Woman’ was the oldest human remains found in the Western Hemisphere. Curiously the Luzia woman’s skull resembled an Australian Aborigine more than a Native American. The Laranjal and Moraes skeletons of Lagoa Santa shared this trait. The Lagoa Santa people’s closest Amerindian relatives are the Yaghan of Tierra Del Fuego and the extinct Pericue of Baja California. 

Some Amerindians carry DNA from Population Y. In 2015 scientists sequenced the genome of three Amazonian tribes – the Xavante (pictured), Karitiana and Surui, who were uncontacted until the 20^th century. 1-2% of their DNA was shared with Australasians. Smaller amounts were also found in Mixe people of Mexico and Aleutian Islanders but no other groups. The findings were published in Nature. Population Y comes from Ypykuera – an Amazonian word for ‘ancestor’.

Less reliable evidence of a Proto-Australasian presence in the Americas:

1. Similarities between the rock paintings of Lagoa Santa and Australia
2. Similarities between Fuegian and Aboriginal Australian body painting
3. Acute eyesight of Fuegians and Aborigines
4. Black facial features of the Olmec colossal heads

Proto-Australasians or ‘Black Asians’ were the first homo sapiens to leave Africa and the original inhabitants of Australia and Southeast Asia. Their descendants include the Aborigines of Australia, the Negritos of Southeast Asia, Melanesians, and Andaman Islanders. Population Y would suggest they reached South America too.

There are five possibilities:

1. Early humans crossed the Atlantic from Africa
2. Proto-Australasians sailed the Pacific from Australia to South America
3. Proto-Australasians island-hopped the Pacific via the Antarctic (Rivet)
4. Proto-Australasians crossed the Bering land bridge before the first Amerindians (Neves)
5. Proto-Australasians island-hopped from Asia via the Kuril and Aleutian islands

Theories 4 and 5 are the most credible. Although Australasians made it to Australia, there is little evidence their boats could traverse the Pacific. If Aboriginal Australians did not settle the Polynesian islands, how could they have sailed to South America?

Proto-Australasian settlement of the Americas is an exciting, if controversial, prospect but alas probably not true. As evidence, only the 2015 Nature study holds sway. In 2018 scientists sequenced Luzia woman’s DNA and found no traces of Proto-Australasian ancestry. Her distinct skull structure was the product of genetic drift. Similarly, no trace of Population Y has been found in the Yaghan or Pericue – at least not yet.  Until further evidence arises, the most likely scenario is the first bands to settle America had an Australasian component in their DNA.

Sources: Anthrosource, Harvard.edu, National Geographic, Nature, NCBI, New Daily, The Scientist, Science, Science Daily, Smithsonian Magazine

See Also:

• Nature – Genetic Evidence for Two Founding Popuations of the Americas
• Nature – Ghost Population Hints at Long Lost Migration to the Americas
• The Scientist – The First Amerindians
• DS Davidson – The Quest of Relationship Between the Cultures of Australia and Tierra Del Fuego
• Fuegians
• The Sentinelese
• The Southern Dispersal
• The Historical Context of Cheddar Man