Only a hand full of species can recognize themselves in a mirror. Humans and elephants are a part of this exclusive club. The video below is fascinating.
It’s always interesting to see how we clever humans test the mental capacity of other animals. Recognizing ones self in the mirror is a complex process in the brain. It requires skills such as self awareness and deductive reasoning to name a few. Showing an animal it’s reflection in the mirror is an excellent way to test it for these skills of intelligence.
How might a superior intelligence test humans? Alternate universes and realities are a common theme in the musings of human kind via fiction. Physicists theorize that alternate universes and realities can and do exist. This is known as the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. What if advanced beings are able to tap in to this phenomenon?
Reality as Reflection of the Mind
Instead of holding a mirror in front of us, they might “hold a reality” in front of us. And instead of testing individuals for a few minutes, they test our entire species over the course of our evolution.
At it’s heart, this is not a radical or new concept. The idea of Karma is loosely related: “causality where intent and actions of an individual influence the future of that individual.” – Wikipedia. In this case, the phenomenon of Karma, would be an artificial law of nature put in place just for us…an ongoing, interactive puzzle we need to solve and master.
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Trippy. That is interesting about Karma. Never thought of it that way.
I saw that TTWH episode. I laughed out loud when I saw the elephant checking itself out in the mirror. Not because it was funny. But because it was illuminating. I am fascinated by stuff like that. That’s why I like your blog.
My father is a physicist and we talked about the alternative realities when I was growing up. None of my friends knew what I was talking about. Is your background physics?
I believe in Karma. Seen it plenty of times.
Elephants are smarter than we think. My dad worked with the in Africa for years. He told me amazing stories.
try practicing random acts of kindness. see the result for yourself.
I cant believe it would actually look at itself in the mirror! That is brilliant!
Maybe elephants are more intelligent than they are given credit for, the same as some other animals, I think they are a lot smarter than we think!
“I cant believe it would actually look at itself in the mirror! That is brilliant!
Maybe elephants are more intelligent than they are given credit for, the same as some other animals, I think they are a lot smarter than we think!”
Perhaps the things that we experience that we can’t explain are really tests from aliens or a higher form of life. Experiences like near death experiences, spiritual journeys, feeling like your soul is leaving your body etc.
In a way we would be similar to the elephant encountering the mirror. Our intelligence would be stimulated, since that is what they are testing for, however we have no way of making use of what they are presenting to us. We just react.
If you have ever seen the bouldercam series they did, there’s a wonderful moment where the male lion spots the camera, snarls a bit and then sits down and peers into it. The presenters are on edge wondering what he’s doing and then the moment when he starts using his reflection to check his mane and groom is wonderful.
I would hope that, if others are studying us, whoever it is is doing so with the same respect, wonder, and genuine affection as the naturalist presenters of that show.
You bring an interesting thought up…how would a superior intelligence test humans? I wonder what they would put in front of us. The IQ test is a way to test our intelligence, but I wonder what more advanced being would do to test us. I had no idea elephants were apart of our mirror-club, they are so intelligent I’m really not that surprised!
I loved watching this video. The tests were very creative to see how self aware elephants are. I remember in science class we had a small mirror and some beta fish. If you held the mirror in front of them, they start attacking the bowl thinking the reflection is another fish.
This is incredible; I would have thought that of all animals, monkeys would be more likely to exhibit this behavior as they are closely related to humans. Your concept of alternate realities is fascinating, really. I love learning and theorizing about these types of things.
A fascinating way of tying together the spiritual and the physical world (science). A great read, thanks for writing this up!
This is a very mind gear churning article. Reading this made of think of many different possibility. I had a hard time grasping that an unearthly being looking into a mirror sees a reality in front of us. These beings can see us trying to figure out life. It boggles my mind to think of. The ideas of other universes has to be real. This vast space around the Earth must be occupied by something else. This idea of Many Worlds Theory of Quantum mechanics is directly applied in the movie Interstellar I recently watched. I highly recommend it. It has to with the theory applied to the idea of climate change, and the world becoming uninhabitable.
you’re wrong about karma, it’s not just for us, It also is true for animals.
and in a way I’d say we already are looking through a glass, let’s name it the “reality” but when on drugs like LSD and Mushrooms you would be seeing through another glass…so you see it’s only in our minds…
………but our minds are what creates our reality. “I think, therefore I am”, and it goes from there. It’s our mind that, at some point in our infancy, allows us to be self aware. We’re not born knowing we’re a 1 day old child. That type of realization only comes in time.
Hallucinogens like LSD may be showing us alternate realities, parallel universes, etc……but without the mind we have, we would not be able to process that information. Science cannot even conclusively tell us how what we see is transferred to our brains for recognition. Between the time that we see a light-bulb and the time that we consciously recognize it as such…………science cannot fill in that blank. They can’t tell us HOW that connection is made neurally.
Therefore, who are we to say what’s “only in our minds”?
“………but our minds are what creates our reality. “I think, therefore I am”, and it goes from there. It’s our mind that, at some point in our infancy, allows us to be self aware. We’re not born knowing we’re a 1 day old child. That type of realization only comes in time.
Hallucinogens like LSD may be showing us alternate realities, parallel universes, etc……but without the mind we have, we would not be able to process that information. Science cannot even conclusively tell us how what we see is transferred to our brains for recognition. Between the time that we see a light-bulb and the time that we consciously recognize it as such…………science cannot fill in that blank. They can’t tell us HOW that connection is made neurally.
Therefore, who are we to say what’s “only in our minds”?”
I remember reading something somewhere that what we see is not even real but only constructs of our mind to help us survive. It said that everything is really just random indistinguishable light but when it goes through our eyes it gets organized in a way that becomes useful to us.
Even though the video has been taken off, I have seen videos of animals looking at mirrors before. It is quite fascinating how they become very territorial and aggressive. Having said that, if aliens were to come to Earth and bring along some alien technology, we would also be quite protective wouldn’t we? I would think our first reaction would be to test it, or destroy it.
I very often wonder about how limited we are in our understanding of the universe and our existence. It’s very possible that a more intelligent type of being has made contact with us or been aware of us, but didn’t think we were worth interacting with.
That is, we may have already failed the mirror test. That’s fascinating to think about, in my opinion, but also kind of terrifying.
Elephants are such beautiful and graceful creatures they are also one of a very select group of animals that are able to express grief at the death of a loved one. Also, I watched this one video where instead of rushing through a fence like a raging bull the elephant actually crossed over the fence, it really is a gentle creature. About self-recognition, there’s a book written by Virgina Woolf about a species of sentient horses in another planet. It’s quite amazing you know, this possibility of being recognized or being conscious about lives different from our own on a massive metaphysical space-altering scale.
Elephants are amazingly smart animals. Because they’re big and slow, we often don’t give them credit for that.
I have to wonder though, if humans are being tested, and what we perceive as “life” is only a virtual reality, then what is real? What is the actual reality of our existence? Do we find out when we “die”?
It does kind of seem like life is a big playing field and testing ground for character and principles. I hope that when it is all said and done the answers and an analysis are provided, so that we can have a general understanding of our driving purpose(s).
Elephants have so many human emotions. It boggles my mind how we still want to hunt them down for small things like Ivory when we have stone in the ground that feels and looks just as good. I would say the same for pigs, but I’m afraid I’m still guilty of eating pork myself. Vegetarianism is currently a work in progress for me.
I wonder what else we share with the Elephant world… Do you think that they might be the next highly evolved species to come to power? They have the empathy for the next stages, but would they have the power to dominate? The numbers are too slim to ensure survival, but it’s an interesting what-if.
We share a lot of things with the animal world. It is scary to think that people still hunt them for sport.
The alternate universe physicists are always talking about is actually the spirit realm. The advanced extraterrestrials are spirits. Don’t be deceived, they exist, live in the spirit realm and are much more intelligent than we are. There is no such thing as reincarnation though, once a person dies, his spirit stays permanently in the spirit realm.
If there were subject to a test of that type we wouldn’t be aware of it. It would be so beyond use that we would be able to understand it. We assume that we would react to the test like the elephant does but what if our reaction was like that of an ant. An ant wouldn’t be aware of the mirror, it would just see it as part of it’s environment.
“If there were subject to a test of that type we wouldn’t be aware of it. It would be so beyond use that we would be able to understand it. We assume that we would react to the test like the elephant does but what if our reaction was like that of an ant. An ant wouldn’t be aware of the mirror, it would just see it as part of it’s environment.”
Yes that is true. Also that would mean there is probably higher forms of being or extraterrestrials among us and wouldn’t even be able to detect them. It may be that our senses are to limited to detect them. Just because they are trying to study us doesn’t neccesitate that they are trying to do it without us seeing them.
It is true that we might be an experiment of another species. There are higher purposes which we are generally are not aware of and only find out about later. One of these purposes might be an alien species’s curiosity, and we are part of their experiment.
It would be hard for us to find out whether we are since we can easily and for a very long time go in a particular manner and be content. Our happiness is our main purpose and it would be hard to function if we discovered that everything was a simulation.
Elephants are really emotional animals, with a high human-like intelligence.
I always wonder if it all depends on talkativeness, I mean maybe animals and humans are more equal than we think, but they just can’t express themselves the way we would understand.
Cats and dogs can also see their own reflections in a mirror. It can be rare, but does happen. The thing is, they don’t realize they are looking at themselves. A cat will try to attack the “other cat” and a dog is likely to try to “play” with the other dog. So, I guess in the case of some animals, the mirror would represent another realm or world, rather than their own. In the case of humans, however, we understand that what we are looking at is a reflection of our own selves and our own world. It’s way too trippy to try to change our understanding of reality.
Pretty cool that both humans and elephants can recognize themselves from a mirror. I am not so sure about cats and dogs though, I feel they think those are similar animals to themselves, but they don’t have that click that says “it’s me!”. 🙂
One day, my biggest dog saw himself in the mirror and he immediately started barking to himself, it was a really curious thing to watch.
When I was a kid, I read a version of Alice through the glass, and the idea of having another different world through the glass chased me for a really, really long time. Even if the idea, it’s pretty scary and almost stupid, I have always been fascinated by those weird mirror theories.
That is really interesting, and I had no idea that we were a part of this exclusive club. I think I knew that we were one of a few, but I did not know it was only one, or that it was elephants. I did always wonder what our cat sees in the mirror when I hold him up, but I guess I will never know. It is really a fascinating concept when you think about and try to see it in terms of evolution. I will certainly get a little mental exercise trying to make sense of that one. Thanks again for sharing.