Washington - Arab Today
A team of Chinese scientists succeeded in training male monkeys, to recognize themselves in front of the mirror, in what is known as the mirror self-recognition (MSR) test, which measures level of self-awareness. The study pointed out that the awareness of body is a cognitive ability which may be found in several species.
The MSR is only thought to be found in humans and a few species of great apes, according to the study.
Rhesus monkeys can use mirrors to find hidden objects like food, but do not normally display MSR.
Researchers have been unable to explain why this is the case and one team in China decided to try and establish whether they could be trained to.
And the report, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, seems to show promise.
Mu-ming Poo, a neurobiologist at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, and his colleagues devised a training regime to put male rhesus monkeys to the test.