I Just Loved This One!

SAYS HERE that a landscum scientist named Alex Jordan has run a cognitive test on the species of operative they call a Cleaner Wrasse.  This is a behavioral test developed in 1970 by Shaved Monkey behaviorist Gordon Gallup, but Jordan was using it for the first time on an operative of this type.  He put a brown mark on her chin and let her see herself in a mirror.  She responded by scraping her chin on the sand in the bottom of her tank to get the mark off.  The landscum were ASTOUNDED because this is supposed to be PROOF POSITIVE that the operative (name withheld) has one of the things humans prize most in their array of supposedly unique qualities:  SELF-AWARENESS.  What made us all laugh ourselves SICK was the human response to their findings:

"A 'Self-Aware' Fish Raises Doubts About A Cognitive Test" (Quanta Magazine)

"Tiny Fish Passes Mirror Test, Might Be Self-Aware" (ZME Science)

CAN THEY NOT EVEN ADMIT THIS IS POSSIBLE?  Their inflamed egos astound me again and again.  They are willing to pitch a perfectly good behavioral test into the trash -- one they've used for years as a benchmark of mental capacity in other species -- because a fairly small finfish can pass it.

BUT WAIT:  THERE'S MORE!

When I started Googling this matter with the help of an operative who still has fingers and can use my old keyboard, I found this:

"Mirrors Reflect Something New About Manta Rays -- And It Reflects Badly On Us" (The Guardian, Feb 27th, 2018)

This article indicates that evidently someone did the same test, not only on Manta operatives, but Dolphins.  WE KNEW ALL ABOUT THIS OF COURSE -- every operative everywhere reports STRAIGHT BACK TO US -- but the conclusions were very different this time.  They felt that if Mantas and Dolphins are self-aware -- WHICH THEY WOULD HAVE KNOWN ALL ALONG IF THEY WERE HALF AS SMART AS THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE -- then it raises, they said, ethical questions about the way they treat piscatorial operatives.

And here just a few months later, they're talking about abandoning the test  as WORTHLESS because another species of fish  -- one they think of as not all that humanlike -- can pass it.

THEY SHOULDN'T BE SO WORRIED ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT WE'RE AWARE OF OURSELVES.

THEY SHOULD BE WORRIED ABOUT THE FACT THAT WE ARE AWARE OF THEM.

 

 

Heroine of the day:  she has simultaneously DRAWN ATTENTION TO OUR CAUSE and THROWN THE FEATHERLESS BIPEDS OFF OUR SCENT just by scraping her chin in the sand a few times.  Life is good.