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Study Finds Self-Recognition Abilities In Birds

Posted on: Tuesday, 19 August 2008, 15:10 CDT

Counter to prevailing wisdom that self-awareness is something only experienced by humans and a few other higher-end mammals, German scientists reported on Tuesday that magpies can recognize themselves in the mirror. 

The discovery highlights the mental skills of some birds - an ability once believed to belong only to humans, chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants.

"This is a remarkable capability that is at least a pre-requisite of self-recognition and might play a role in perspective taking," the researchers wrote in a report about the study.

"It shows that the line leading to humans is not as special as many thought," said Helmut Prior of the Institute of Psychology at Goethe University in Frankfurt, in an interview with Reuters.

"After finding this kind of intelligence in apes, many people thought it had developed once in one evolutionary line with humans at the end. The bird studies show it has developed at least twice," said Prior, the study’s lead researcher.

Magpies have a brain structure very different from that of mammals, having shared a common ancestor with mammals 300 million years ago.  The discovery of their self-awareness follows a previous study in 2002 in which a crow surprised researchers with its skills in converting a wire into a hook to lift food from a tube.

In the current study, Prior and his team carried out a series of tests on five hand-reared birds, marking each with a yellow or red dot that could only be seen in a mirror.  They found the birds consistently scratched the mark, demonstrating that they recognized the mirror image as themselves and not another animal.  A "sham" black mark that was invisible on the birds' dark feathers was used as a control to ensure the birds were actually seeing and reacting to the red or yellow mark, rather than simply examining what had been done to them.

The results cast doubts on some basic ideas about the way in which our brains operate, particularly the notion that the neocortex brain area in mammals is responsible for self-recognition. Since birds do not have a neocortex, the findings suggest that higher cognitive skills can take other pathways to develop.

Prior believes the crow family, which includes magpies and jays, is the smartest bird species.   However, he said that parrots may yet reveal hidden mental skills as well. 

"Crows have really huge brains compared to other birds," he told Reuters.

The research was published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Biology.

Image Courtesy Adrian Pingstone (Wikipedia)

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On the Net:

• Goethe University
• PLoS Biology

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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