“11/11/2009, 12:37pm EST”
NY TIMES: Studies show pigs are smarter than humans generally believe. Again. →
In the current issue of Animal Behaviour, researchers present evidence that domestic pigs can quickly learn how mirrors work and will use their understanding of reflected images to scope out their surroundings and find their food. The researchers cannot yet say whether the animals realize that the eyes in the mirror are their own, or whether pigs might rank with apes, dolphins and other species that have passed the famed “mirror self-recognition test” thought to be a marker of self-awareness and advanced intelligence.
…The finding is just one in a series of recent discoveries from the nascent study of pig cognition. Other researchers have found that pigs are brilliant at remembering where food stores are cached and how big each stash is relative to the rest. They’ve shown that Pig A can almost instantly learn to follow Pig B when the second pig shows signs of knowing where good food is stored, and that Pig B will try to deceive the pursuing pig and throw it off the trail so that Pig B can hog its food in peace.
I’m reminded of a phrase I learned in 2nd grade: No shit, Sherlock. Of course pigs have the ability to interact with their environment and protect their interests in various ways. Millennia of human-driven reverse evolutionary breeding can’t rid pigs of their long biological history as creatures who had to survive within dynamic environments.
Setting aside the double standard borne by the fact that “intelligence” differences play no part in the degree to which we extend basic rights to the normal members of our own species, the “famed mirror test” is not an objective measure of intelligence. Since it is so obviously arbitrary and blatantly species-ist, I don’t know how or why that “standard” came to mean something to so many people, especially scientific researchers.
I have pretty good theories though. Here’s one: We’ve selectively defined this supposed benchmark of “advanced intelligence” to buoy our own claims to power and consumption, and to rationalize extreme egotistical indulgence. Not coincidentally, egocentrism is literally built into the test: If one can recognize one’s self (by looking at a man-made device, no less), one has “advanced intelligence.”
Whatever the cause of the “ability-to-recognize-oneself-in-mirrors-determines-intelligence” meme, adherence to it has no basis in reason. If humanity has such advanced intelligence, perhaps we ought to make use of it a little more often.
Never leave home without it.
