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Originally Posted by ken0042
I have to agree that showing signs of intelligence does not make the animal self aware.
When I was young I used to have gerbils. Not the smartest animals in the world but they did figure out different ways of escaping by manipulating the lid to escape; once they even figured out that by hanging upside down they could shake the lid enough to make it fall over.
There was even one time one of them showed the ability to reason. I had taught them to ring a bell hanging in the cage if they needed food. Once during the middle of the day I heard the bell ringing and was about to give them heck because it wasn't feeding time. To my horror I found one of them had broken his leg and was caught in the running wheel, and the other went and rang the bell to call me to help.
(for the animal lovers out there this does have a happy ending. The vet taught us to make splints for him and he did recover.) 
Both of these are showing determination and a bit of intelligence, but neither is an example of being self aware. |
And this raises the age-old question: just how does one effectively give a gerbil heck?
Anyhow, as for "self-awareness", what about bears (or a lot of other animals, but I'll use bears) and the whole "it's not a good idea to get between a mother bear and her cub" thing? I don't know where you draw the line between plain old instinct and "self awareness" but it seems to me that the mama bear and the bear cubs all are aware that they are part of a family and wouldn't that signify "self-awareness"? The mama obviously has an emotional attachment to the cubs, and the cubs obviously know where they fit in the world.
And this one is probably all "instinct" but you could look at a bear fattening himself up for the winter snooze and come to the conclusion that he's planning for the future. Maybe. Planning for (and even realizing you have one) the future would = self-awareness.
Neato topic. I can't really understand why it's debatable that animals have emotions though. It seems pretty clear to me.