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Figure 1. Some views of the experiments. A: a Myrmica sabuleti worker climbing on a mirror and rapidly moving its antennae. B: Myrmica sabuleti workers seeing congeners through a glass and behaving as usual. C: a M. ruginodis worker with a blue spot on its clypeus, on a mirror and trying to remove the spot with an anterior leg. D: a M. ruginodis worker motionless at a few cm of distance from the mirror, after having been confronted with its reflection. E: a worker with a brown dot on its clypeus and set in front of a mirror: it did not clean itself. F: a worker marked in blue on its occiput and set in front of a mirror (the dot was not visible in the mirror): it did not clean itself.

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Figure 1. Some views of the experiments. A: a Myrmica sabuleti worker climbing on a mirror and rapidly moving its antennae. B: Myrmica sabuleti workers seeing congeners through a glass and behaving as usual. C: a M. ruginodis worker with a blue spot on its clypeus, on a mirror and trying to remove the spot with an anterior leg. D: a M. ruginodis worker motionless at a few cm of distance from the mirror, after having been confronted with its reflection. E: a worker with a brown dot on its clypeus and set in front of a mirror: it did not clean itself. F: a worker marked in blue on its occiput and set in front of a mirror (the dot was not visible in the mirror): it did not clean itself.
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myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Jul-2024 08:26:16 JST myrmepropagandist
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Here is the paper. It was widely discussed ... on reddit for a long time I didn't think it was real.
Ants are painted with dots that match their exoskeletons, some are painted with blue dots. The ants are observed interacting with a mirror.
I've seen this experiment mentioned as a reason why calling the mirror dot test a "test for self awareness" is flawed: a lot of people really don't like this result.
Still, the journal gives me pause. What do you think?
https://www.journalofscience.net/showpdf/MjY4a2FsYWkxNDc4NTIzNjk=

In conversation about 4 months ago from sauropods.win permalink