Most animals just don’t get mirrors. I discovered this early in life, when I showed my “chameleon” (an anole, actually) a hand mirror and was amazed by the little lizard’s violent reaction to his own reflection. I’m surprised he didn’t blow a gasket.
So here we are with dogs and cats, goats, a horse, lizards, and even a monkey, all of them baffled by that mysterious expanse of glass. We’ve seen our pets figure out harder things that mirrors, but mirrors stump them. My iguana paid no attention to mirrors, but never did work out why he couldn’t eat pictures of strawberries painted on the plate.
P.S.–I may be having Facebook issues again, so I’d be obliged to anyone who shares this post on his or her FB page, just so I can see if it generates referrals.
this is one of the funniest yet. Some of the critters want to play, and some want to fight. must be frustrating.
Was that the same iguana that never gave up hope that the dog would feed him?
The video was pretty good. Who knows how animals perceive things? They obviously perceive things differently by species. I noticed that one dog sniffed behind the mirror and then went back to staring at the mirror. But.as they say, a good (or at least exciting) time was had by all. 🙂
It was my turtle who hoped our cat would feed him. But the iguana did like to make friends with dogs and cats. Very unusual!
Now I remember.
He must’ve thought that any warm blooded creature held the secret to obtaining food. 🙂
The only animals of mine that ever ‘got’ mirrors were my birds: parakeet, amazon parrot, nanday conure. And they all loved looking at themselves 🙂