By Susan Milius
The antics of an Asian elephant named Happy suggest that her species could be one of the few whose members recognize their own images, researchers say.
When Happy stood in front of a jumbo mirror, she repeatedly touched her trunk to a white X painted on her forehead, says Joshua M. Plotnik of Emory University in Atlanta. Without the mirror, Happy couldn’t see the X.
In previous studies, only a few species—people, great apes, and dolphins—reliably attend to marks on themselves that are visible only in mirrors.