• partofthevoice@lemmy.zip
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    19 hours ago

    How do you know the dogs which want to fuck and fight aren’t the smarter ones?

    What if the other dogs don’t recognize the reflection as anything meaningful — not a tool, a reflection, …? In that case, at least the “dumb” dogs figured out that something’s up.

    Edit: anthropomorphizing the idea that nonchalant reactions = understanding well enough to not care. There’s many reasons any particular dog may not fight a mirror. Particularly, they may just rely less on vision to determine whether something is alive or not. That would not indicate understanding, though… it would indicate the dogs understandably passive approach to things which don’t seem to have any significance. Closer to a lack of awareness than an actual understanding of any kind.