42: The Answer to Almost Everything · Season 1 · Episode 56
Are Animals Self-Aware?
Sunday, December 4 · 29 min
For a long time, humanity was relatively unanimous: animals are little more than biological machines. This view has gradually changed, particularly with the pioneering work of the naturalist Charles Darwin: Darwin believed that consciousness is a fundamental property of life in general. In his view, even simple creatures have a rudimentary internal workings of feelings and impressions that are not so different from those of humans. But how can we know what animals really think and feel? You can't ask them, and you can't look inside their heads either. For a long time, researchers tried to solve the problem with the so-called mirror test: if a living being recognizes itself in a mirror, it must have self-confidence. Chimpanzees and dolphins pass the mirror test, but dogs do not. Does this mean that dogs are not self-aware?
