Animals & nature · 2023
After passing a mirror recognition test, can cleaner fish distinguish their own face from an unfamiliar fish’s face in photographs?
Yes. Cleaner fish that had passed a test of recognizing themselves in a mirror did not attack photographs showing their own face but attacked those showing an unfamiliar face, even when faces and bodies were swapped. This supports recognition of their own face in photographs, but what it means for broader awareness of themselves remains uncertain.
Details
Researchers tested whether cleaner fish recognize themselves using a mental image of their own face, rather than by matching their movements to movements in a mirror. Before mirror experience, the fish attacked photographs of both themselves and unfamiliar fish. After all had passed a test of recognizing themselves in a mirror, they did not attack their own still photographs but still frequently attacked photographs of unfamiliar fish.
To examine the role of the face, researchers used photographs combining faces and bodies from different fish. The fish did not attack photographs with their own face on an unfamiliar body, but attacked photographs with an unfamiliar face on their own body. In another test, mirror-experienced fish scraped their throats when shown photographs of themselves with a throat mark, although their actual bodies were unmarked.
These behavioral results support the authors’ interpretation that the fish recognize their own face using a mental image, rather than relying only on matching movements. They do not settle the broader, controversial question of what recognizing oneself in a mirror reveals about awareness of oneself. The abstract does not report the sample size.
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