Check it out: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15487308/ ...In a 2005 experiment, Happy faced her reflection in an 8-by-8-foot mirror and repeatedly used her trunk to touch an "X" painted above her eye. The elephant could not have seen the mark except in her reflection. Furthermore, Happy ignored a similar mark, made on the opposite side of her head in paint of an identical smell and texture, that was invisible unless seen under black light.
"It seems to verify for us she definitely recognized herself in the mirror," said Joshua Plotnik, one of the researchers behind the study. Details appear this week on the Web site of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Still, two other zoo elephants, Maxine and Patty, failed to touch either the visible or invisible "X" marks on their heads in two runs of the experiment. But all three adult female elephants at the zoo behaved while in front of the jumbo mirror in ways that suggested they recognized themselves, said Plotnik, a graduate student at Emory University in Atlanta... ...The three Bronx Zoo elephants did not display any social behavior in front of the mirror, suggesting that each recognized the reflected image as itself and not another elephant. Many other animals mistake their mirror reflections for other creatures... Bashir tries daily to touch that odd cat that lives somehow behind the door (and regularly traps himself in the bathroom by whacking at the mirror, which is on the back of the door). Lihleete just ignores the ghost kitty. Hmm, I think Uplifted pachyderms will challenge engineers to fit out a spaceship that holds them... Debbi Dumbo Flys! Maru :) ____________________________________________________________________________________ Cheap Talk? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates (http://voice.yahoo.com) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
