Mirror tests are used to assess an animal’s response to its reflection. Explore how fish react and learn if they possess self-awareness. In February, a team of researchers published a paper showing ...

It’s almost automatic—if you notice a smudge when you look in the mirror, you wipe it off. Seems simple, but only a few particularly clever species such as orangutans and dolphins share this ability ...

Before deciding whether or not to fight another fish, cleaner wrasse check their own reflection in a mirror and size themselves up. First, Taiga Kobayashi at Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan and ...

Cleaner wrasse fish, the tiny reef dwellers that pick parasites off larger clients, behave more cooperatively when a potential customer is watching, according to experimental evidence published in ...

Cleaner wrasse picking parasites of a Fusilier fish. Underwater Macro Image taken scuba diving in Raja Ampat, Indonesia.© SergeUWPhoto/Shutterstock.com Cleaner ...

Alex Jordan had just surfaced from a dive off the coast of Corsica when he called me back last summer. “We’ve put mirrors in the wild,” he said. “It’s always a bit of a nightmare.” With the help of ...

Scientists often warn against anthropomorphism — the attribution of human characteristics to animals or even nonliving things. But it’s hard to resist the charm of Labroides dimidiatus, a species of ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. For decades, self-awareness has been guarded as a very ...