The dog days of summer are officially over, which brings us to our last episode of Short Waves

Dog Week. Today, a conversation I had last year with no Greenfield boys about animals and mirrors,

including my barri-owned pup. Stay safe out there, y'all, and remember, make sure to give all your

pets all the cuddles all the times. You're listening to Short Waves from NPR. Maddie Sify here with

MPR Science correspondent Nell Greenfield Boys. Hi, now. Hey, Maddie. So 2020 is almost over. Thank goodness.

And we need to talk about something kind of disturbing that we have both experienced this year

with my dog and your parakeet. Okay, I've told you again and again, it's not my parakeet. It belongs

to the kids. Sure, sure, sure, sure. So since I've been working from home during the pandemic,

I've spent a lot of time with my dog and your dog is very cute. Yes, thank you. It keeps her alive.

And one day, I noticed that she was watching me using the mirrors. Like, I'd wake up,

look in the mirror, and I would see her little border-colle face staring intensely, not at herself,

but me in the mirror. Yeah, I mean, I was skeptical, but you know, you've got the photos and it's

striking. It's, yeah, it's startling, honestly. And I know that your parakeet, sorry, your child's

parakeet is similarly mirror obsessed. Yeah, that's actually kind of a known parakeet thing. It's

not just, you know, our parakeet. They kind of zero in on mirrors and you know, it doesn't even have

to be a mirror. Like, my kid's parakeet doesn't even have a mirror. He's just, you know, whatever

reflective surface, you know, like the side of a water dish or a bell or whatever. I mean, he just

sits there and chatters away at it. Right. So like, what I want to know is what does that bird

think he's seeing? I mean, people use mirrors all the time, but what do animals know about mirrors?

That is exactly what Gordon Gallup wondered back in the 1960s. He actually was thinking about it

one day when he was in his bathroom. And it occurred to me as I was shaving in front of the mirror,

wouldn't it be interesting to see if other creatures, other animals, could recognize themselves in

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