These finger-sized coral reef fish were the first fish to pass the mirror test, a common assessment to see whether an animal recognises that the reflection is of its own body and not another animal.

The research team, led by Masanori Kohda, a biologist at Osaka City University in Japan, had originally tried the mirror test on a different species of fish, a cichlid, one thought to be ...

After passing the MSR test, the bluestreak would avoid aggression towards the larger photo-fish, while still attacking the smaller one without revisiting the mirror, suggesting a self-awareness of ...

He still thinks that cleaner wrasses have never passed the mirror mark test, because the fish scratched only at brown-colored marks that resembled ectoparasites. In one of the new experiments ...

The mixed results in other animals make it all the more astonishing that a small fish can pass. In their first mirror test studies, published in 2019 and 2022, Kohda’s team exposed wild-caught ...

a small fish known for cleaning parasites from bigger fish, had passed the mirror test. The mirror test — more formally known as the mirror self-recognition test — has long been considered a gauge of ...

In 2018, they became the first fish to pass what’s known as the mirror test, an experiment used to gauge self-awareness by assessing whether or not an animal recognizes its own reflection.

Before squaring up for a fight, some fish check themselves out in the mirror to make sure they're big enough. This strange behavior was seen in bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus ...

Tiny fish found to have sophisticated self-awareness only ever seen in some humans. Tiny fish found to ‘check its body size in the mirror before getting into fights’ ...

CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as ...

The fish cleaner wrasse and the large-brained bird the Eurasian magpie have also demonstrated this ability in other studies. (However, the mirror test has faced criticism for its ability to ...

Regardless of the size of the model fish in the photograph, the territorial wrasses picked a fight. Then, they repeated the test but added a mirror, and the fish checked out their reflection.