Bird Brained

Self-awareness in the animal kingdom is an interesting phenomenon. Other than humans, apparently there are a few animals that recognize themselves when they look into a mirror and not another animal of the same species. I wonder how old humans have to be before they realize this themselves. My theory is that we infer we are looking at ourselves. This is because as a youngster we are usually with at least one other person. So if we look into a mirror we can recognize that person looking back at us in the mirror and thereby infer the other individual must be ourself. Or if we are alone maybe we recongize the person in the mirror is wearing the same clothing and is mimicking our movements.

Today I saw an unfortunate bird who did not realize he was looking into a mirror. I arrived home early from work and the parking lot was a bit sparse. The spot I took was one spot away from another shiny black car that had parked close enough to the curb of the sidewalk that the front bumper was extending over and onto the curb. As I was getting out I saw the little bird furiously pecking at the bumper, and beating it with its wing. It took me a second but then I saw that he was drawn to his reflection. For several minutes he just kept pecking away and beating his wing at himself. Then another little bird of a different species or gender flew in and start chirping quite animatedly at the bird. It was like he was trying to tell him "Hey that's not another bird!" After a bit of this the chirping bird tried to fly into the other bird and started pecking him too. But it was to no avail, the little bird just would not budge. So the chirping bird chirped a bit more in vain and finally flew off.

At this point I took pity on the poor bird who didn't realize it wasn't another, and I got out of the car to spook him away. But he wouldn't fly away! Instead he just started hopping around and under the car trying to hide from me while still pecking at that reflection, until finally, after entirely too much effort on my part, he flew off.