Awareness, especially self-awareness, is very difficult to study. Self-awareness evolved among our animal ancestors and is found in their descendants today. Its presence can be detected using the ...

Source: Bert de Tilly, via Wikimedia Commons. Distributed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Since the 1970s, scientists have employed the mirror test as an assay of self-awareness. If an animal or child ...

Humans are well known for looking in the mirror and responding to their reflections. Interestingly, scientific research has revealed that it is a rare trait among animals, with only a few species ...

Adélie penguins seem to have passed a portion of the mirror test, in which animals that see their reflection in a mirror appear to recognise that they are seeing themselves and not another individual.

Joining the likes of killer whales (Orcinus orca) and bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), plus a number of primates, a common dark-furred mouse has passed what’s known as the mirror test, backed ...