Creationism in Crisis
Research Shows That Cleaner Wrasse Have a Sense of Self
Research Shows That Cleaner Wrasse Have a Sense of Self
“It’s me!” fish recognizes itself in photographs | Osaka Metropolitan University
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Bluestreak cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus
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Bluestreak cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus
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Bluestreak cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus
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Bluestreak cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus
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Bluestreak cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus
And of course, not being sentient they are not capable of having emotions and run entirely on instinct and reflexes.
The nail was driven in quite casually and without the intention of refuting creationism, like so much else in science, simply by exposing the facts. The facts are once again diametrically opposite to what Creationists believe. The research team showed that a species of fish known as the bluestreak cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus, has a sense of self to the extent that it recognises photographs of itself by recognising its own face.
Perhaps even more surprising was the fact that, when the photograph was 'shopped' to make it look there was a parasite attached to their throat, the wrasses rubbed themselves to try to remove it! This shows a remarkable degree of self-awareness and sentience, especially since mirrors are not part of their natural environment.
The team that made this discovery was led by Professor Masanori Kohda from the Graduate School of Science at the Osaka Metropolitan University. They showed that cleaner wrasses recognise themselves in photographs the same way humans do - by recognising their own face. These fish were chosen as research subjects because they appear to recognise strangers in their midst and drive them away, while tolerating others of their own companion group. In this way individuals maintain and defend their 'cleaning stations' where other fish come to be cleaned of parasites, even from inside the mouth of predatory fish.
The research is described in the Osaka Metropolitan University press release:
A big step forward in vertebrate cognitive function researchThe research and its significance are explained in the team's open access paper in PNAS:
A research team led by Specially Appointed Professor Masanori Kohda from the Graduate School of Science at the Osaka Metropolitan University has demonstrated that fish think “it’s me” when they see themselves in a picture, for the first time in animals. The researchers found that the determining factor was not seeing their own body but seeing their face. These findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In this study, relevant experiments were conducted with Labroides dimidiatus, commonly known as a cleaner fish, which are known to be able to recognize themselves in mirrors and regularly attack other unfamiliar cleaner fish who intrude on their territory. Each cleaner fish was presented with four photographs: a photo of themselves; a photo of an unfamiliar cleaner; a photo of their own face on an unfamiliar cleaner’s body; and a photo of unfamiliar cleaner’s face on their own body. Interestingly, the cleaner fish did not attack photos with their own faces but did attack those with the faces of unfamiliar cleaner fish. Together these results indicate that the cleaner fish determined who was in the photograph based on the face in the photo but not the body in the similar way humans do.This study is the first to demonstrate that fish have an internal sense of self. Since the target animal is a fish, this finding suggests that nearly all social vertebrates also have this higher sense of self.
Professor Masanori Kohda, lead author
Laboratory of Animal Sociology
Department of Biology and Geosciences
Graduate School of Science
Osaka City University, Osaka, Japan
To negate the possibility that the fish considered photographs of themselves as very close companions, a photograph mark-test was conducted. Fish were presented with a photograph where a parasite-like mark was placed on their throat. Six of the eight individuals that saw the photograph of themselves with a parasite mark were observed to rub their throats to clean it off. While showing those same fish pictures of themselves without parasite marks or of a familiar cleaner fish with parasite marks did not cause them to rub their throats.
SignificanceIt's worth repeating what Professor Kohda said: because this ability is present in a fish, it is likely to be present in all social vertebrates - a far cry from what Creationist frauds tell their credulous dupes to make them feel special.
Some animals have the capacity for mirror self-recognition, but implications for self-awareness remain controversial. Here, we show that cleaner fish, Labroides dimidiatus, likely recognize their own mirror image using a mental image of the self-face comparable to humans. Mirror-naïve fish frequently attacked photographs of both themselves and strangers. In contrast, after passing the mirror test, aggression against their own photograph and composite photographs of own face/stranger body declined, but aggression remained toward unfamiliar and composite photographs of stranger face/own body. Our results suggest that cleaner fish with MSR ability can recognize their own mirror image based on a mental image of their own face, rather than by comparing body movements in the mirror. This study demonstrates how animals recognize self-images.
Abstract
Some animals have the remarkable capacity for mirror self-recognition (MSR), yet any implications for self-awareness remain uncertain and controversial. This is largely because explicit tests of the two potential mechanisms underlying MSR are still lacking: mental image of the self and kinesthetic visual matching. Here, we test the hypothesis that MSR ability in cleaner fish, Labroides dimidiatus, is associated with a mental image of the self, in particular the self-face, like in humans. Mirror-naive fish initially attacked photograph models of both themselves and unfamiliar strangers. In contrast, after all fish had passed the mirror mark test, fish did not attack their own (motionless) images, but still frequently attacked those of unfamiliar individuals. When fish were exposed to composite photographs, the self-face/unfamiliar body were not attacked, but photographs of unfamiliar face/self-body were attacked, demonstrating that cleaner fish with MSR capacity recognize their own facial characteristics in photographs. Additionally, when presented with self-photographs with a mark placed on the throat, unmarked mirror-experienced cleaner fish demonstrated throat-scraping behaviors. When combined, our results provide clear evidence that cleaner fish recognize themselves in photographs and that the likely mechanism for MSR is associated with a mental image of the self-face, not a kinesthetic visual-matching model. Humans are also capable of having a mental image of the self-face, which is considered an example of private self-awareness. We demonstrate that combining mirror test experiments with photographs has enormous potential to further our understanding of the evolution of cognitive processes and private self-awareness across nonhuman animals.
Kohda, Masanori; Bshary, Redouan; Kubo, Naoki; Awata, Satoshi; Sowersby, Will; Kawasaka, Kento; Kobayashi, Taiga; Sogawa, Shumpei
Cleaner fish recognize self in a mirror via self-face recognition like humans
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; 2023, 120(7), e2208420120. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2208420120
Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by PNAS. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
What I don't understand is how they know what their face looks like if they have never seen it.
ReplyDeletef you read the article, you'll see that the ones who were show photos were the ones that were already familiar with mirrors and had passed the mirror test.
Deleteah, sorry. I didn't read carefully enough. But very interesting discovery. thanks.
ReplyDelete