Animal Consciousness

Through my readings involving animal ethics and the allocation of rights to animals, one question which keeps appearing has been the question of animal consciousness? Do animals have a sense of awareness or a sense of being? Do they know of their existence like we do above all, how does this help us make an argument towards their moral integrity and value? In the same light, while watching a documentary on animal behavior in my 'animal and ethics' class it dawned on me that they might have a sense of being and awareness as i watched the reactions of both wild and domesticated chimps,baboons and even dolphins to mirrors they encountered.

A group of chimps in the wild stumbled upon a trash dump where they found pieces of mirrors and were fascinated by it. Some of these chimps thought their reflections in the mirrors were another monkey and as their curiosity and eagerness to find the monkey in the mirror grew, they finally realized there was no monkey and stopped looking. Whether they stopped out of hopelessness for not finding the other monkey or because they realized it was an image of themselves can only be speculated upon but that's a topic for a different conversation. One way mirrors where installed in dolphin tanks at an aquarium and the dolphins where observed to not react to the image in the mirror. Their calm and somewhat playful behavior after seeing the image of themselves suggested to the experts that they knew it was themselves and not another dolphin which may have brought about a much more excited and jubilant behavior. But some say the dolphins' responses and recognition to the mirror images are to be expected thanks to their evolved brain systems.

Domesticated chimps on the hand; those exposed to human relationships and experience had a similar response to the images in the mirror like the dolphins and although their well-developed may have played a role in this, it is safe to say that their observation of their "owners" , made it a lot easier. Seeing a human open a box with a key will make a intelligent observant monkey look for a key to open the same box if previous attempts to open it without the key fail! Nonetheless, these aforementioned instances bring us to the question of animal consciousness. Are animal conscious of themselves like being able to tell that they are looking at a reflection of themselves and not at some other monkey? Also, are they aware of the fact that they are other animals similar or dissimilar to them (specie wise) and do not just respond to prey and mates on just safety, livelihood instincts and pheromones alone?