Why won't pets acknowledge themselves in the mirror?

@deni: Good question… I was just wondering that this morning when my cat didn’t react either.

Funny, good question. My dog will not usually look at herself in a mirror, but will look endlessly at herself in reflective glass such as the oven door, the fireplace door and the TV stand. Wonder why?

keep in mind that a feline relies on sense of smell, as well as hearing, to determine the world around it. If he/she sees another object that looks like a cat, but that thing does not smell, or sound like one, very likely it is interpreting that ‘cat’ object as another oddity in the world of men that the animal finds itself everyday. a red dot moving on the floor captures a cat or dogs attention as a distant source of interest that may not have given off a big smell or sound yet.
also, do not rule out the emotive source. I knew a dog that would go nuts when other dogs were on the TV, but would ignore reflections entirely. I believe there is a link from living things to living things, which makes them seem more real.
I watched a video clip online where a kitten jumped at its own reflection, perhaps that kitten was still exploring the strange world, and hadn’t yet begun to interpret them as fake? I doubt the kitten thought the reflection was another kitten, just a strange “it” that moved.
as for the other thing about the oven door, maybe a flat reflection vs. a wavy or curved one holds less interest for them.

I had a dog that barked as a puppy at himself but got over that fairly quick.
One of my cats uses the mirror in the bedroom to look down the hall from her perch on the bed.She is a smart little thing:)

I’ve got a dog that loves to look in mirrors. He’ll just stare at himself and not react, but if he sees me moving around in the mirror a ways back, I can see the reflected-him staring right at me, and he starts to bark.
He did more in the beginning and wouldn’t calm. Now when he does that I walk over, keeping in the line of sight the reflection has, and get him to ease down.

I guess I’m not really answering your question… hm. Probably because I don’t really know why either, but I think it’s interesting for sure!

Good question.

I have a dressing mirror in my bedroom that you can turn up and down. One of my cats likes to push it down so he can look at his handsome self.

I watched a very cute video of a puppy trying to play with himself in the mirror. I have to go try it with my cat.

I think it’s subjective, dependent on the cat or animal as an individual.

I have had cats that seemed to play with a mirror and others that ignore them entirely.

My goose on the other hand was raised with a mirror in his box as a gosling to simulate another goose, part of raising single waterfowl and to this day he gets rather defensive at mirrors, they are rivals. lol

My cats are interested in the mirror. They don’t recognize it as themselves, but they do notice the reflection. All of my cats will try to look behind it, as if they are trying to figure out where this other “cat” actually is.
In fact, I am washing walls today, so I have a mirror propped up against my sofa. One of my cats was standing above it looking down on his own reflection, totally baffled. His fur was standing on end and he kept pawing at his reflection. Entertaining, actually. :)

My dog does, well she kind of stares for a moment & then recoils in a startled manner. Funny really, i’d have thought she’d have posed, flirting with her reflection. She is gorgeous after all.

you mean, like this??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9ckMbuGHVU

I love Barry.

Multiple studies have shown that most animals do not have enough self-awareness to recognize themselves in mirrors.

@Jude i love you. so..

@crisw That makes sense, I wouldn’t expect him to know that it’s him but cats certainly know what other cats look like, so why don’t they at least react to there being another cat right in front of them?

@VS that dog is so freakin cute I want to squeeze it to death! (not literally just in the way that you wanna squeeze really cute things really tight..)

My cat wondered why we were standing there. She seemed to see me, though. @ VS Gidget is the one!

@VS Aww, that was cute.

I agree that most cats and dogs don’t have enough self-awareness to recognize that the reflection is themselves (especially since the reflection has no scent). That said, I know that some cats/dogs pay more attention to reflections than others, much like some pay more attention to the TV.

I have a big, heavy mirror in my room that was on the floor, propped against the wall, for a month or two before I got a handy person in to help me hang it. During the time that it was feline-accessible, I would constantly catch my cat sitting in front of the mirror, checking herself out. No hackles, growling, or anything (as she would with a strange cat) and I found it to be pretty amusing. It happened way too often to be coincidence, like if she just found that spot to sit randomly.

I’ve never had a kitten that didn’t go through the “attack itself in the mirror” phase. I always thought they eventually figured out it was themselves and never worried about it again.

As CrisW points out, they lack the cognitive awareness to recognize that the image is of themselves. That is far from CrisW’s opinion; it is a verified fact. The only animals that have demonstrated the ability to recognize themselves in a mirror are:

Humans
Chimps
Dolphins
Elephants
(and I think Gorillas)

The interest or lack of interest in what is in the mirror are byproducts of differentiation in personality, eventual realization that the image presents no potential threat and/or poor eyesight. Cats rarely use vision as their primary sensory organ but do tend to attack anything that moves (and is smaller than them). In even mildly bright light, many cats cannot see the image in the mirror clearly.

That being said, cats will definitely react to two dimensional representations from time to time (and varying from cat to cat) be they images in a mirror, vague reflections in a window or images on the TV.

But in response to the original question, no, the cat cannot tell that it is seeing an image of itself.

@crazyivan also magpies.
I also seem to recall reading an article that said that all mammals most likely recognize faces. For example, your dog knows that your face belongs to you. Or that sheep recognize the faces of other sheep from their flock. However, very few animals are able to recognize their own face, as @crazyivan and @crisw both pointed out.

When my dog was younger we had a big mirror leaned up against a wall, there was a gap behind it. She saw her reflection and ran round the back to see where this other dog was hiding!

Last I checked, there were few animals (mostly higher primates) that had enough of a sense of “self” to comprehend that a reflection is not another animal. Some primates will sit there like a girl putting on makeup, fully aware that that reflection is them, but most animals don’t get that.

I prefer to not acknowledge myself in the mirror a lot of the time.

@jerv well that’s what I get now, but then what I don’t understand is why they don’t recognize it, at least, as another animal.

The structure of their brains, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test