Excellent post, but I roll to disbelieve that this is fully true about cats and dogs. I accept that the average cat and dog fail it. But our pets vary widely in intelligence. I used to dog sit, and there were definitely a few, maybe the top decile at most, that used mirrors as tools (for example, if I spoke to them while they were facing the mirror, they’d look at my reflection instead of me). I never tried the mark test with them.
Excellent post, but I roll to disbelieve that this is fully true about cats and dogs. I accept that the average cat and dog fail it. But our pets vary widely in intelligence. I used to dog sit, and there were definitely a few, maybe the top decile at most, that used mirrors as tools (for example, if I spoke to them while they were facing the mirror, they’d look at my reflection instead of me). I never tried the mark test with them.