The white-browed laughingthrush (Pterorhinus sannio) did not pass the mirror self-recognition test

Abstract

Self-awareness is an important concept in discussions of consciousness that has received increasing attention. To our knowledge, mirror self-recognition and self-awareness has not been studied in the white-browed laughing thrush Pterorhinus sannio. In our investigation, wild Pterorhinus sannio were presented with a self-recognition test known as the mirror self-recognition test (MSR). All birds performed four different displays in front of the mirror that we call “look around”, “crouch”, “jump to top of the mirror”, and “shake the wings”. These behaviours did not occur in the absence of the mirror. These behaviours typically are directed towards other individuals this suggest that P. sannio does not recognise itself in the mirror, and it does not have the capacity of self-awareness, at least not judged from the mark mirror test.

Key Words:

• Pterorhinus sannio
• Sylviidae
• self-awareness
• mirror self-recognition (MSR)
• observational study

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTION

Yan Zhang and Liqiong Yang contributed equally to the manuscript. F. Liu developed the general idea and drafted the manuscript with Y. Zhang; Y. Zhang and L. Yang performed the open field observation. F. Liu drew the figure of a bird during MSR. P. Pohl proofread the manuscript. F. Xu performed the MATLAB and statistical analyses.

DATA ACCESSIBILITY

All data will be made available upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Chengdu Medical College Natural Science Foundation (CYZ18-08, CYZ18-20, CYZ18-33), the Sichuan Provincial Education Department (17ZA0134), the basic scientific research business expenses of the Central University of Southwest Minzu University (2021NYB08), and Southwest University for Nationalities special fund for basic scientific research operations of central universities (2021NYB08).