Vanity In The Animal Kingdom: Rhesus Monkeys Are Taught To See Themselves In A Mirror

Humans aren't the only mammals who like a good glance in the mirror every once in a while. Recent findings published in Current Biology show that our hairier ancestors, the apes, also like to check up on their appearance.

A recent study examined rhesus monkeys and found that they can be taught to mirror recognition. The discovery is likely to help scientists further understand the neural origins of self-awareness, according to Neng Gong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"Our findings suggest that the monkey brain has the basic 'hardware' [for mirror self-recognition], but they need appropriate training to acquire the 'software' to achieve self-recognition," Gong said, in a news release.

For the study, researchers shined a laser on the monkey's faces, which resulted in a mild irritant that's intended to spur the specimens into using the mirror to their advantage. Following several weeks of training, the monkeys began to recognize their face and laser in the mirror moving their hands on the spot of the laser and then sometimes, smelling their finger tips afterwards-suggesting a recognition of themselves in the mirror. In fact, the monkeys even began to start examining other parts of their bodies, too.

With future studies, researchers are hoping that this can help them explore new neural mechanisms that are associated with mirror recognition learning, as well as various brain disorders that involve intellectual disabilities, including autism and Alzheimer's disease.

"Although the impairment of self-recognition in patients implies the existence of cognitive/neurological deficits in self-processing brain mechanisms, our finding raised the possibility that such deficits might be remedied via training," researchers added. "Even partial restoration of self-recognition ability could be desirable."

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