Penguins may be self-aware.
A trio of researchers—one with the Indian government’s Ministry of Earth Sciences, another with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and the third with the National Institute of Advanced Studies, also in India—has found that some species of wild penguins may have some degree of self-awareness.
Prabir Ghosh Dastidar, Azizuddin Khan and Anindya Sinha have written a paper describing their study of the behavior of Adélie penguins in Antarctica and what they learned in their effort. The full paper is available on the bioRxiv preprint server.
Prior research has shown that self-awareness is rare in the animal kingdom —up to now, only a few mammals, some birds and some fish have been found to have it. In humans it is an easy thing to test, but in animals it takes some doing. Most studies looking for it have used what is known as the mirror test, where as its name suggests, test animals are allowed to see themselves in a mirror while researchers study their reactions.
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