FURTHER REFLECTIONS ON SELF-RECOGNITION IN PRIMATES

A review of the literature, together with a reanalysis of existing dat a and some additional data, was used to show that Heyes' (1994, Anim. Behav., 47, 909-919) recent critique of self-recognition research in p rimates is without merit. Heyes' contention, that self-recognition is an artefact of incomplete recovery from anaesthetization and species d ifferences in ambient face touching, is contrary to (1) the temporal p arameters of the mark test, (2) responses that chimpanzees, Pan troglo dytes, make to control body marks (i.e. those that can be seen without a mirror), (3) results from studies that have not used anaesthesia, ( 4) responses that chimpanzees make to unmarked portions of the face, ( 5) the absence of a correlation between developmental changes in face touching and self-recognition, (6) differences among chimpanzees in pa tterns of mirror self-directed behaviour and normal self-grooming and (7) the absence of substantial species differences in face-touching be haviour. (C) 1995 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour