Evolution Self Conscience Line Theory Seems to be Broken. Magpies Proved to Recognize Themselves in the Mirror. by Milota Sidorova

Magpies tend to have self recognition skills, reported journal Plos Biology this week. Group of German scientists provided mirror test in which major part of subjects recognized themselves as individuals not the other animal.
Peeking around, this can be more than fantastic hint to develop and reconstruct the evolution line, ending up with humans as fully conscious species.

The fact that even few of birds have ability to recognize themselves crosses previous theory, linked with the only one evolution line, where self conscience appeared only within few species of higher mammals like dolphins, elephants, chimpanzees and orangutans. Birds, that had the same ancestor with mammals for about 300,000 years ago seem to create more divided self conscience line.
Still, those skills have appeared only within the smartest crow family.

However, until now, the ability of self conscience has been marked up with structured brain neocortex, peculiar only to mammals. Magpies as well as the rest of the birds do not have neocortex – so the mechanism tends to work in different way in this case.

Magpies, known as one of the smartest birds in the world, that had already taken their places in lot of fairy tales are social behaving birds. Except of parental care they show tool making skills, specially in case of nest building. Last year it was magpie, that curved wire into hook to build up its place. Magpies are able to even lift food from the table.

During the experiment five magpies were exposed to mirror several times. Scientists had marked them with a red and a yellow dot, that couldn't be seen directly, but in the mirror. Results were more than surprising. Three of five animals decreased social behavior, when exposed in front of the mirror.
Experiment with other species proved social behavior like dancing, observing and trying to attack the image. This could lead into a thesis, the animal didn't recognize its image, it has recognized it as the other individual.
Three of five magpies decreased social behavior and spent more time observing the image. Finally, when seen the hidden dots, they begun to touch and scratch it, not on the image, but on their own bodies.
Animals could choose between two corners of the cage, one with a mirror, the second with a non reflective plate. The rest of the group spent more time in front of the second corner, trying to avoid direct look into the mirror.

The reactions were different, but showed that some of them do have their self recognition skills better developed.
Magpies, on the contrary to the rest of bird group have more differed and bigger brain, that consequently raises the possibility to be smarter.


related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080819/sc_nm/magpies_mirrohttp://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060202

by Milota Sidorova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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posted by Lucia Adamova