Elephants get all reflective

CATS might try to pick a fight with their image in a mirror. Dogs might bring a gift of food to what they think is a new found friend. But humans and chimpanzees - and maybe dolphins - have been thought to be the only species to primp before the mirror because they recognise themselves.

Now elephants can be added to the list, say researchers from the Yerkes Primate Centre, in Atlanta, Georgia and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Scientists watched as three female elephants at the Bronx Zoo in New York inspected their reflections. They examined inside their mouths, their ears and showed other signs of self-awareness, said graduate student Joshua Plotnik, a co-author of the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The elephants did not respond socially to the images, as would be expected if they thought they were seeing other elephants.

"After the first few days, they were spending quite a bit of time in front of the mirror," said Plotnik. "In the morning, they would run out to get some hay and bring it back to eat in front of the mirror."

Most importantly, an elephant named Happy used her trunk to touch a mark on her head that she could see only in the mirror - a standard test of self-awareness developed 35 years ago by biologist Gordon Gallup of the State University of New York. The same test has been used to assess mirror self-recognition in children and apes.

Previous experiments had failed to produce such recognition, but they used small mirrors out of the animals' reach. This study used a 2.5 metre by 2.5 metre mirror made of plastic framed in steel.

They tried to look behind the mirror, kneeling in front to look under it and even attempting to climb the wall holding the mirror. Such behaviour is typical for self-aware animals, Frans de Waal, a co-author said.