Elephants Self-Aware, Unlike Bush

So, elephants are self-aware? Good for them.

If Bush and his band of fascist sadists were self-aware, they'd have some sense of shame.

Would they not?

Elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror and use their reflections to explore hidden parts of themselves, a measure of subjective self-awareness that until now has been shown definitively only in humans and apes, researchers reported yesterday.

The findings confirm a long-standing suspicion among scientists that elephants, with their big brains, complex societies and reputation for helping ill herdmates, have a sufficiently developed sense of identity to pass the challenging "mirror self-recognition test."

The test, which in this case required construction of a huge, "elephant-proof" mirror at the Bronx Zoo, where the experiments were conducted, provides an index of an animal's ability to conceive of itself. It is a quality of self-consciousness that some scientists believe is a prerequisite for the emergence of empathy and altruism.

Such animals, the thinking goes, are in a position to use what they know about themselves to make inferences about other beings and their needs. . .

Empathy? Altruism?

"Inferences about other beings and their needs . . . say, what class of beings does that not remind us of?

Elephants, pictured above, pay homage to their dead.

Pro-torture Bushists call themselves pro-life whilst murdering 600,000+ of the post-born, and they just don't bother going to any funerals.

Sadism si!

Empathy? No.


WaPo here.