How Self-Aware Is a Dog?

Since the 1970s, the mirror test has been an important scientific tool for testing self-awareness in humans and animals. It's a test dogs have always failed. This doesn't necessarily mean dogs lack self-knowledge. Using a more dog-focused test, or by studying their behavior in relation to self-awareness, has produced evidence to suggest dogs behave with a sense of self.

  1. The Mirror Test

    • Psychologist Gordon Gallup was the first researcher to use the mirror test with animals. He set up a mirror for his chimpanzees. At first they attacked their reflections as if they were strange chimps; but after a few days, the chimpanzees began using the mirror to examine their own bodies, especially body parts such as their rumps and up their noses, which they normally couldn't see. Gallup then marked the animals' heads with dabs of red ink. When the chimpanzees looked in the mirror and touched the ink spots with their hands, and put their hands to their mouths to examine the ink, they passed the test. For Gallup this was evidence of their self-awareness.

      Other animals like dolphins and an elephant have also passed, but not dogs. They respond to their reflections either as if they are seeing other dogs, by barking at them or by inviting play with a bow, or by ignoring them. But they never seem to recognize themselves.

    Yellow Snow

    • A biologist from the University of Colorado, Mark Bekoff, felt the visual cues the mirror test relied on were not relevant to dogs, as their primary sense is smell. So he devised a test to see if dogs could identify their own scent. Over five winters, Bekoff collected yellow snow containing the urine from his own dog -- Jethro, a Rottweiler and German shepherd cross -- and from other dogs without Jethro seeing him do it. As the snow held to the urine, Bekoff was able to move the samples and locate them further down the trail they were walking. Bekoff then measured how long his dog sniffed at each test patch and recorded his dog's actions. Jethro sniffed each patch of snow and urinated over the other dogs' urine stained snow, but he sniffed at his own yellow snow for a much shorter time and left it without urinating.

      Just as people recognize their own reflection and differentiate between themselves and others, Jethro had identified his own urine and differentiated between his scent and that of the other dogs. Bekoff saw this as evidence of dogs having self-awareness.

    Body-ness and Mine-ness

    • According to Bekoff, dogs' sense of "body-ness," the awareness of their own bodies and what they can do -- such as running and what they know they can leap over and what they must go around -- along with their sense of mine-ness, where dogs know what belongs to them, such as their toys, their sleeping places and their territories, demonstrate some degree of self-awareness in dogs.

    Size Awareness

    • Certain behaviors also point to dogs having self-awareness. Alexandra Horowitz, professor of animal behavior, comparative cognition and psychology at Barnard College, argues that dogs understand their own sizes. According to Horowitz, most dogs who like carrying sticks will always choose sticks of a similar size, as if they are aware of what they can pick up and hold in their mouth. Knowledge of size is apparent when large and small dogs play together; witness large dogs moderating their strength, bumping gently into their playmates and allowing themselves to be attacked.