ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2025
On the mirror test and the evolutionary origin of self-awareness in vertebrates.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- External Entropy Production and Human Evolution Toward Multi-Body Life.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Conscious birds.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- The evolutionary functions of consciousness.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Personality predicts dispersal and settlement in a novel habitat-a mesocosm experiment.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Self-awareness in animals is often documented by showing evidence for mirror self-recognition (MSR), which is confirmed by the mirror mark-test. The classic assumption about self-awareness was that it is a complex cognitive process, restricted at best to a few large-brained species. Indeed, early MSR research yielded positive results only in great apes, elephants, dolphins and magpies, while most endotherm species failed. However, recent detailed proof of MSR based on a mental representation of self, i.e. private self-awareness (PrSA), in cleaner wrasse
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.