So I’m gonna make a random philosophical post about perceptions of self by comparing humans to birds, so if you aren’t into weird existential thoughts, this probably isn’t for you.
So, I took veterinary classes in college. One thing that we learned about was something called anthropomorphism, which is basically applying human characteristics and behaviors to nonhuman things, particularly with animals in this context. This doesn’t sound like an important word to remember or think about, but it is when talking about basic animal needs and separating what we perceive to be a human emotion, when in fact it is not. For example, someone comes in with a cat saying,
“He’s just so mean! He pees on my bed every other day, it’s like he does it on purpose.”
When dealing with a statement like this, you have to separate what the owner perceived as “him being mean” from what is actually happening in the situation to find true cause of this behavior. Some potential causes for a cat peeing on your bed may be his litterbox placement/material, which may make the cat uncomfortable. Medically, they could have something like a bladder infection or a UTI that caused them to do this.
Recognizing when pet owners are anthropomorphizing is important because people often can assign the wrong reasoning to why their animal is doing something, which doesn’t help solve the problem that is causing it in the first place. An owner might find a shelter to surrender an animal to for a behavior that could have been solved, or an animals conditions may lead to further complications if untreated. So as silly as this word is, it’s important to see when pet owners are doing this so you can lead them down the most helpful path for them and their animal.
Here’s where things gets weird
I’ve been think about this word a lot for some reason, and it made me think of how we could reverse this role. How maybe instead of personifying animals through anthropomorphism, I could simplify my own emotions towards myself by putting myself into the perspective of an animal with less complex emotions than my own. So when thinking about this, and my own perception of self, I wanted to put myself “into the mind” of an animal that has a lesser self awareness than I.
So, I thought about my grandfathers old bird. He was an only bird, and had a mirror in his cage that he was obsessed with. I wondered, why was he so obsessed with it? If birds have no concept of self awareness, why did he spend so much time looking at it and exclaiming to himself? Dogs don’t do that, they can’t even comprehend their reflection in the first place. The answer was kind of silly, but also raised even more questions within myself.
Although birds can conceptualize that their reflection exists, they perceive it as a different bird. Upon further research, I also learned that it wasn’t a good idea to have a mirror in their cage, and that this obsession was actually extremely unhealthy for their physical and mental health. Because they think it is another bird, they spend all their time essentially talking to nobody and obsessing over a reality that doesn’t exist, and when put with other birds later in life, it can massively disrupt their social behavior/function with them. And this isn’t a easy obsession for the bird to turn around from once it’s started, since taking the mirror away could cause massive distress because the bird views this image of themselves as a their only companion.
I sat on this thought for a while. Although birds do not perceive their reflection the same way we do our own, I felt there was a lesson to be had by trying to understand why this is harmful for the bird, and how this obsession over the imagine of yourself could be applied to my own extremely complex feelings in comparison. If a bird could be so massively effected by their reflection like this without even being able to comprehend it as their own, what does that say about how deeply I am effected by my own obsessions with my reflection?
This made me think about how long I spend in the mirror, in the selfie side of my phone camera, in the editing process of pictures of myself. I spend a lot of time obsessing, whether it be bad(mostly), or even things that I consider desirable about myself. And I realized,
I’m a freaking bird with a mirror in its cage
Except I can analyze myself with self awareness, I can internalize even deeper what that reflection tells me, I can learn all the same unhealthy obsessive behaviors from an even larger range of emotions and understanding of myself. This perception of myself effects my social function, how I feel about myself when interacting with people, how I choose to communicate based on that perception of my own physical being, how even good obsessions of my image give me a false sense of comfort. This obsession that we see in birds with mirrors, even though vastly different from humans, shows how much perception can effect the psyche even without the full range of human emotions and understanding.
I’m not sure exactly how to wrap up the crazy rabbit hole I just went down, but to all my fellow birds out there, maybe it’s time to take the mirror out of your cage too.
