Birds in the Mirror

An interesting piece of news in today's Vancouver Sun! A woodpecker has been smashing vehicle mirrors on Vancouver's east side. Apparently that woodpecker thought he's looking at another woodpecker in the mirror and he didn't like it a bit!

People around the neighborhood began to cover their mirrors with plastic bags for protection. Replacing these mirrors will cost several hundred dollars and they are not covered under auto insurance.

It is said that birds fighting their reflections are not new. Particularly robins, which can spend an entire summer going after the same image in a window. But it's unusual for a woodpecker to go after a small car mirror.

So these birds don't have self-awareness because they can't recognize their own images in the mirror. This reminds me of my cats. As I wrote in my previous post “Cats in the Mirror”, my cats show no aggressiveness to their own images in the mirror. This could mean that cats have consciousness and they are self-aware because they know the images in the mirror represent themselves.