To determine if animals have a sense of ‘self’, it is common practice in psychology to subject an animal to a mirror test, such that if an animal fails to be threatened by its mirror image, it is presumed that the animal has a sense of ‘self’. Beta fight fishes are known for attacking such an image and therefore have been relegated to the group of animals that have no sense of ‘self’. A major problem with this test, however, is that it depends exclusively on one sense, namely the sense of vision, and therefore the test results cannot be generalized to the other senses, especially for animals that depend more on non-visual perception such as underground dwelling mammals.
A better test of ‘self’ is to determine the group to which one is sexually attracted. Xavier Hollander of the book ‘The Happy Hooker’, became an instant success in the United States, by detailing her activities as a madam of a New York brothel including her having sex with a dog (Hollander 1973). The latter caused a monumental sensation, contributing to Hollander’s book being emplaced on the bestseller list that eventually sold more than fifteen million copies.
This human obsession with bestiality should not be seen as a positive as far as an animal species is concerned, for to continue such behavior (exclusively) will assure its extinction. A better way to assess whether animals have a sense of ‘self’ is to determine whether they discriminate between their species and other species sexually. For, to do otherwise—having no sense of ‘self’—is the fastest way for a species to go extinct (but see Footnote 1). Ergo, all animals must have a ‘conscious’ sense of ‘self’. That bestiality (cross-species sexual behavior) is rare in the animal world must be presumed, given its consequences on heritability.
Footnote 1: There is evidence that Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens exchanged genes and that they had a comparable neocortical brain structure (Sansalone et al. 2023). Whether the two groups were evolving to be one (or two) species before Homo neanderthalensis went extinct 40,000 years ago is unclear.
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