Chimps displaying at mirror in forest
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jwidness
moderator
I saw this interesting video of chimps displaying toward themselves in a large mirror: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMHnNF2rqpI
I'm not sure how I feel about putting something in their space that causes them to get so irritated, but it's great footage of display behavior -- even some females get involved!
And as a side note, it shows that not all chimps immediately recognize themselves in a mirror, which I think is a common misconception.Posted
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Snorticus
I was fascinated by the variety of chimp body language exhibited there while simultaneously feeling bad for their frustration and confusion. Fooling them like that seems an unfair human trick. But really, we humans as a general rule think nothing of dominating the other forms of life that we share the planet with. Interesting & unsettling.
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jwidness
moderator
Apparently there's more to the story: they left the mirror up for a long time, years it seems, and the chimps had many other reactions, including this cute infant exploring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z48pJP28SIg
The youtube channel has lots of videos with the mirror -- elephants, leopards, chimps, gorillas, etc: https://www.youtube.com/user/XHB06400CANNES/videos
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Snorticus
Yes the clips were fascinating to see what they did, still made me uncomfortable. I was thinking that I wouldn't feel good about setting up a mirror to film fear reactions from Dodge or Pearl or Esme or that poor shy girl chimp who's so afraid of just the small capture-cams.
Xavier Hubert Brierre is a french photographer and not a scientist so he was only curious to film reactions of any kind and not thinking about this from the animal's perspective. All the news articles talk about how hilarious the videos are. Sorry to be a debbie-downer about this, it's really just my opinion.
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MimiA
scientist, moderator
@Snorticus - I fully agree with you! Thanks for sharing your thoughts 😃
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jwidness
moderator
in response to Snorticus's comment.
I agree with you too -- it's definitely upsetting to think that they're just filming for fun and without any concern for the well-being of the animals. The media coverage especially is unpleasant to see as they mostly misinterpret what is happening. But it made me feel just a little tiny bit better to see that the chimps are not always displaying at it. I originally posted the video really just so that people could see what display behavior looks like. I wish that they would take down the mirrors.
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DZM
admin
Chimpanzees are indeed one of the few animals who have passed the mirror test -- but, yes, even Wikipedia is very clear that mirror recognition in chimps only comes after a prolonged aggressive/fear reaction.
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MimiA
scientist, moderator
in response to jwidness's comment.
I think it is a great example too @jwidness, think it is so great that we can discuss the pros and cons of this video in this open forum 😄
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Snorticus
in response to jwidness's comment.
Your post made me really think about the ethics of the various ways humans use cameras to capture animals and also showed me chimp behavior I'd not seen. Our discussions on talk.chimpandsee are a very cool aspect to this project! I think all the variety of observation and information in the comments make the site that much richer and more rewarding.
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Orohena
I just came through this discussion and had the same concern than @Snorticus but also thought as @jwidness that it is nice videos of behaviour.
Because I had the same concern about that I looked who is Xavier Hubert Brierre (before seeing the description of @Snorticus). The only first things that I found was all the articles about how funny it was to see all these chimps so scared...
But then I had the idea to look on "Pubmed" to see if he is also a scientist who publish something from these videos.I found a paper :
Reflections in the rainforest: full-length mirrors facilitate behavioral observations of unhabituated, wild chimpanzees.
Anderson JR, Hubert-Brierre X, McGrew WC.
Primates. 2017 Jan;58(1):51-61. doi: 10.1007/s10329-016-0574-7. Epub 2016 Sep 14.I went quickly through the paper.
1st conclusion, Xavier Hubert-Brierre is not a scientist (his address on the paper seem to be a home address, it is definitly not a lab). I still didn't found any reason why he installed those cameras and mirror (the only reason might be having funny videos)
2nd thought is that, at least someone took those videos to make a paper and discuss about the behaviours seen during the 3 years of videos (different aggression behaviour, chimp trying to understand what was the mirror when they realize it was not threatening, or some sexual behaviour).
The last thing I wanted (and really expected...) to see was if, in the discussion, they had concern about their approach. In the introduction they talk a lot about pros and cons of studies with habituated chimps (not "wild" behaviour, more aggression between chimps, diseases).
In the results they say that chimps are more anxious in presence of mirror but i their discussion, they only talk about the pros of their approach (cheap to do, pretty easy to maintain, a lot of nice videos of very different animals) but never about the cons. They only seem happy about what they did and never talk about the chimp point of view. Which, I think, is disappointing.At the end of the paper, the acknowledge the National Park that gave them the authorization (to X. Hubert-Brierre) to install all of this and I think it is there job to protect the National Park and the animals which live there.
I never worked with chimpanzees so when I read the paper, many things are new to me. So I have no idea if the conclusion they get and if the quality of the paper worth the fact that they make the chimps (and all the other animals of this park) feel very anxious.
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MimiA
scientist, moderator
Thanks @Orohena for your thoughts!
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