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I'm not sure about all cats. My cat ignores mirrors - even previously unseen ones - altogether, at the same time he reacts to youtube videos with cats. However,

I'm not sure about all cats. My cat ignores mirrors - even previously unseen ones - altogether, at the same time he reacts to youtube videos with cats. However, when he has seen himself in the mirror for the first time in his life he behaved like it was another cat, for two minutes or so. Divide an almost identical uniform background with a piece of glass, block smell and sound if possible. Put two cats on the opposite sides of the glass and observe their reactions. Put mirror in the place of glass and observe reactions. I can bet the reactions would be drastically different, and not just for cats.

trhway 12y ago
the same about my dog - as a puppy he initially reacted to his mirror image like it was another dog there. Since that, passing by the mirror, he sometimes quickly glances into it like humans do. He does usually react to dogs on TV.
zoba 12y ago
I always wondered what screens look like to animals. Whats to say the screen's refresh rate makes sense to some animal's eyes?
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  Anecdotally, I know that some cats will follow a mouse pointer on the screen and can determine both its movement and location (since some of them will directly attack it if you move it around, particularly if you try to mimic the rough movement behavior of bugs, which is what I assume they think they are attacking). And FWIW, I've observed this behavior on old 30hz CRTs as well as modern 240hz LCDs and various things in between.
- chc 12y ago
  I'd bet it probably looks jumpy to a cat, but cats seem to find sudden jumpy movements interesting.
- User9821 12y ago
  Apparently you can trick an octopus if you use high definition video, so the display is obviously visible to them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmzfxFF5vDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmzfxFF5vDI
- spingsprong 12y ago
  I saw a video on television about a decade ago, a fly had landed on a computer monitor, and was following the mouse pointer around the screen.
- jpindar 12y ago
  There are computer games made for cats, and of course many videos of them playing them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxW_qPU4KVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxW_qPU4KVQ This one is interesting because the cat tries to reach underneath the tablet to get the mouse, which to me implies that it perceives it as an object rather than just showing a "swat at any movement" reflex.
ripter 12y ago
If you never saw your reflection before, then suddenly someone places a mirror in front of you. It would probably take a few minutes for you to realize that it's you in the mirror and not another human.
ecdavis 12y ago
My cat ignores mirrors. He also ignores screens and isn't bothered by audio of dogs or cats. At the same time, he's very alert and will generally spring to attention if he hears a dog or cat outside. A few years ago he was introduced to another cat, separated by glass, and his reaction was completely different compared to looking at a mirror. I don't remember the first time he saw a mirror. I think that cats have a pretty decent idea of what is and isn't real. While a reflection may be interesting in that it looks like another cat, it lacks the accompanying sound and smell of an intruder and is therefore safe to ignore. On a related note, many years ago my family lived in a house with a lot of bird life in the back yard. There was a family of magpies, a number of chickens and a solitary male guineafowl. While moving in we leaned an old mirror against a fence in the yard and it ended up staying there for years. Initially, the magpies attempted to fight their reflections but they quickly learned that there was no point. After that they ignored the mirror. The chickens never seemed to notice it in the first place. The guineafowl, though, was most interesting. This is a species that forms flocks in the wild. This particular guineafowl, though, had been separated from its flock for years and was completely alone. To begin with it had the same reaction as the magpies and attempted to fight itself in the mirror. Over time, however, this behavior stopped. Instead of fighting, it would simply stand in front of the mirror for hours on end.
- aetherson 12y ago
  My cat also totally ignores mirrors, screens, etc. And she completely flips out when she sees another cat through the window, fifty feet away. I'm pretty confused by this. I don't think that her sense of smell or hearing is so acute that she can smell or hear the other cat through glass from so far away. She doesn't have binocular vision at that distance, I would assume. Parallax? How does she determine that that's a real cat while cats in mirrors and screens aren't?
  - mblakele 12y ago
    Cats have much better long-range vision than short-range. Long range they are probably better than you think. Short of about a foot they don't really focus at all, and rely on their whiskers. Like most predators they key in on movement. Taken together I think these features explain the behavior you've seen.
georgemcbay 12y ago
I'm fairly certain my cat recognizes me through mirrors as I have a large 3-pane sliding closet-covering mirror in one room and when she sees me "in" it and I do the slow-blink, she responds just like she does sans mirror (she slow-blinks in return). I never saw her first experience with a mirror though and have no specific indication that she recognizes herself but she is very skittish around other cats and has no negative reaction when around said large mirror, so if she notices the image of herself at all in the mirror she must associate it in a very different way than she does other cats.
- bobbles 12y ago
  My cat does the same, if I am laying on the bed and she walks through the room, the mirror allows her to see me. When she sees me in the mirror she jumps up onto the bed for pats
User9821 12y ago
My dog never saw a mirror in his life, he lived outdoors, and aside from a puddle, he would never have an opportunity to see his own reflection. One day I had a fullsize mirror outside. I walked my dog infront of it, pointed to it, tried to hold his head to look into the mirror, and there was absolutely no reaction. It's like my dog was looking into an empty wall. It wouldn't make eye contact with the reflection, it was simply like it didn't exist. So, what's going on here? My dog would go crazy if another dog was anywhere within view, but nothing happened. Did my dog just understand without doubt that's a reflection, that dog is me, that human is you, there's no point in even looking at it for a second? Or did my dog just recognize it as a 2D surface, and think anything in the mirror doesn't exist, it's just a bunch of shapes moving around. Kind of like holding out a printed photo of a dog, where it would just see a blob of color on the paper, recognize there's no dog here, nothing physically present, no depth, no smell, no noise, etc.
- TwoBit 12y ago
  I have this theory that some animals (e.g. cats and dogs) do in fact recognize that mirrors are reflections, but they just don't care about what's in the reflection. We are fascinated by the idea that we are watching ourselves, but that's a somewhat meta concept and animals just don't care. Just because an animal doesn't care about reflections doesn't mean it necessarily feels like it needs to rub red paint off its reflected self or even really make that connection.
  - simonster 12y ago
    This seems right. I work with monkeys, and some of our monkeys have mirrors attached to their cages. They don't use the mirrors to inspect themselves, but they do seem to use the mirrors to surreptitiously spy on other monkeys. It's likely that a monkey can quickly figure out that the thing in the mirror isn't another animal and when they move, the thing in the mirror moves, but drawing the connection that they are the thing in the mirror seems quite a bit harder.
TwoBit 12y ago
One of my cats clearly recognizes me in the mirror and understands that the mirror is a reflection of me. I've done tests where I put the cat in front of the mirror and I stand behind the cat. The cat looks at me in the mirror. I pull out a treat and the cat turns around to get it from me. My other cat clear recognizes itself in the mirror because whenever I force it to look at itself in the mirror, it strains to look away from its disgusting recognition that it is a cat and not a human. I'm serious about how it reacts, though it's only my interpretation as to why it acts that way.
- ThrustVectoring 12y ago
  >I've done tests where I put the cat in front of the mirror and I stand behind the cat. The cat looks at me in the mirror. I pull out a treat and the cat turns around to get it from me. Have you done the same thing with a piece of cardboard instead of a mirror? Your cat may be hearing you pull out the treat.
hnriot 12y ago
look what you've started :) ultimately, every social network (hn included now) devolves to discussing cats. Humans make such good pets.

trhway 12y ago

the same about my dog - as a puppy he initially reacted to his mirror image like it was another dog there. Since that, passing by the mirror, he sometimes quickly glances into it like humans do. He does usually react to dogs on TV.

zoba 12y ago

I always wondered what screens look like to animals. Whats to say the screen's refresh rate makes sense to some animal's eyes?

georgemcbay 12y ago
Anecdotally, I know that some cats will follow a mouse pointer on the screen and can determine both its movement and location (since some of them will directly attack it if you move it around, particularly if you try to mimic the rough movement behavior of bugs, which is what I assume they think they are attacking). And FWIW, I've observed this behavior on old 30hz CRTs as well as modern 240hz LCDs and various things in between.
chc 12y ago
I'd bet it probably looks jumpy to a cat, but cats seem to find sudden jumpy movements interesting.
User9821 12y ago
Apparently you can trick an octopus if you use high definition video, so the display is obviously visible to them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmzfxFF5vDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmzfxFF5vDI
spingsprong 12y ago
I saw a video on television about a decade ago, a fly had landed on a computer monitor, and was following the mouse pointer around the screen.
jpindar 12y ago
There are computer games made for cats, and of course many videos of them playing them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxW_qPU4KVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxW_qPU4KVQ This one is interesting because the cat tries to reach underneath the tablet to get the mouse, which to me implies that it perceives it as an object rather than just showing a "swat at any movement" reflex.

ripter 12y ago

If you never saw your reflection before, then suddenly someone places a mirror in front of you. It would probably take a few minutes for you to realize that it's you in the mirror and not another human.

ecdavis 12y ago

My cat ignores mirrors. He also ignores screens and isn't bothered by audio of dogs or cats. At the same time, he's very alert and will generally spring to attention if he hears a dog or cat outside. A few years ago he was introduced to another cat, separated by glass, and his reaction was completely different compared to looking at a mirror. I don't remember the first time he saw a mirror. I think that cats have a pretty decent idea of what is and isn't real. While a reflection may be interesting in that it looks like another cat, it lacks the accompanying sound and smell of an intruder and is therefore safe to ignore. On a related note, many years ago my family lived in a house with a lot of bird life in the back yard. There was a family of magpies, a number of chickens and a solitary male guineafowl. While moving in we leaned an old mirror against a fence in the yard and it ended up staying there for years. Initially, the magpies attempted to fight their reflections but they quickly learned that there was no point. After that they ignored the mirror. The chickens never seemed to notice it in the first place. The guineafowl, though, was most interesting. This is a species that forms flocks in the wild. This particular guineafowl, though, had been separated from its flock for years and was completely alone. To begin with it had the same reaction as the magpies and attempted to fight itself in the mirror. Over time, however, this behavior stopped. Instead of fighting, it would simply stand in front of the mirror for hours on end.

aetherson 12y ago
My cat also totally ignores mirrors, screens, etc. And she completely flips out when she sees another cat through the window, fifty feet away. I'm pretty confused by this. I don't think that her sense of smell or hearing is so acute that she can smell or hear the other cat through glass from so far away. She doesn't have binocular vision at that distance, I would assume. Parallax? How does she determine that that's a real cat while cats in mirrors and screens aren't?
- mblakele 12y ago
  Cats have much better long-range vision than short-range. Long range they are probably better than you think. Short of about a foot they don't really focus at all, and rely on their whiskers. Like most predators they key in on movement. Taken together I think these features explain the behavior you've seen.

georgemcbay 12y ago

I'm fairly certain my cat recognizes me through mirrors as I have a large 3-pane sliding closet-covering mirror in one room and when she sees me "in" it and I do the slow-blink, she responds just like she does sans mirror (she slow-blinks in return). I never saw her first experience with a mirror though and have no specific indication that she recognizes herself but she is very skittish around other cats and has no negative reaction when around said large mirror, so if she notices the image of herself at all in the mirror she must associate it in a very different way than she does other cats.

bobbles 12y ago
My cat does the same, if I am laying on the bed and she walks through the room, the mirror allows her to see me. When she sees me in the mirror she jumps up onto the bed for pats

User9821 12y ago

My dog never saw a mirror in his life, he lived outdoors, and aside from a puddle, he would never have an opportunity to see his own reflection. One day I had a fullsize mirror outside. I walked my dog infront of it, pointed to it, tried to hold his head to look into the mirror, and there was absolutely no reaction. It's like my dog was looking into an empty wall. It wouldn't make eye contact with the reflection, it was simply like it didn't exist. So, what's going on here? My dog would go crazy if another dog was anywhere within view, but nothing happened. Did my dog just understand without doubt that's a reflection, that dog is me, that human is you, there's no point in even looking at it for a second? Or did my dog just recognize it as a 2D surface, and think anything in the mirror doesn't exist, it's just a bunch of shapes moving around. Kind of like holding out a printed photo of a dog, where it would just see a blob of color on the paper, recognize there's no dog here, nothing physically present, no depth, no smell, no noise, etc.

TwoBit 12y ago
I have this theory that some animals (e.g. cats and dogs) do in fact recognize that mirrors are reflections, but they just don't care about what's in the reflection. We are fascinated by the idea that we are watching ourselves, but that's a somewhat meta concept and animals just don't care. Just because an animal doesn't care about reflections doesn't mean it necessarily feels like it needs to rub red paint off its reflected self or even really make that connection.
- simonster 12y ago
  This seems right. I work with monkeys, and some of our monkeys have mirrors attached to their cages. They don't use the mirrors to inspect themselves, but they do seem to use the mirrors to surreptitiously spy on other monkeys. It's likely that a monkey can quickly figure out that the thing in the mirror isn't another animal and when they move, the thing in the mirror moves, but drawing the connection that they are the thing in the mirror seems quite a bit harder.

TwoBit 12y ago

One of my cats clearly recognizes me in the mirror and understands that the mirror is a reflection of me. I've done tests where I put the cat in front of the mirror and I stand behind the cat. The cat looks at me in the mirror. I pull out a treat and the cat turns around to get it from me. My other cat clear recognizes itself in the mirror because whenever I force it to look at itself in the mirror, it strains to look away from its disgusting recognition that it is a cat and not a human. I'm serious about how it reacts, though it's only my interpretation as to why it acts that way.

ThrustVectoring 12y ago
>I've done tests where I put the cat in front of the mirror and I stand behind the cat. The cat looks at me in the mirror. I pull out a treat and the cat turns around to get it from me. Have you done the same thing with a piece of cardboard instead of a mirror? Your cat may be hearing you pull out the treat.

hnriot 12y ago

look what you've started :) ultimately, every social network (hn included now) devolves to discussing cats. Humans make such good pets.