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Corvids include ravens, jays, crows and magpies among others.
鴉類包括渡鴉、松鴉、烏鴉和喜鵲等。
And what kinds of cognitive abilities are we talking about?
我們說的是什么樣的認知能力呢？
Well, corvids and some mammals have the ability to plan for the future, to store food for instance, in places where they can find it later.
鴉類和一些哺乳動物有為未來謀劃的能力，比如說把食物儲存在它們以后能找得到的地方。
It's been suggested in fact that jays, corvids known for stealing each other's food, may hide their food precisely because they are projecting their own tendency to steal onto other jays.
事實上有人認為，松鴉（一種以互相偷竊食物為人們所知的鴉）可能會把食物藏起來，原因正是它們把自己偷竊的可能性投射到其它松鴉上了。
So let's talk about a study recently conducted with magpies.
來看看最近一個關于喜鵲的研究。
As I said, magpies are corvids.
正如我所說的，喜鵲屬鴉類。
And because corvids have these other cognitive skills, researchers wanted to see if they were also capable of mirror self-recognition.
因為鴉類具有其它的認知技能，研究人員想知道鴉類是否具有鏡像自我認知能力。
So they gave them the mirror mark test, placing yellow sticker on the birds' black throat feathers.
所以他們給喜鵲做了鏡像標記測試，給鳥喉嚨上的黑色羽毛貼了黃色標簽。
At first, the magpies all engage in the same social behaviors that other animals do—looking behind the mirror, etc.
一開始，喜鵲表現的行為和別的動物沒什么兩樣——看鏡子后面等等。
But eventually, some of the birds, while looking in the mirror, kept scratching at the mark until they got rid of it.
但最后，其中一些鳥在看著鏡子的同時，不斷地抓撓標記，直到它們把標記弄掉。
And they didn't scratch at it when there was no mirror around. So they passed the test.
在沒有鏡子的時候，它們不抓標記。它們通過了測試。
Wow! Do any other birds have this ability?
哇！其它鳥也有這種能力嗎？
Well, not that we know of.
據我們所知，沒有。
There was a study using pigeons, where researchers attempted to reduce MSR to a matter of conditioning, that is, they claimed that the ability to recognize oneself in a mirror could be learned.
有個研究用了鴿子，研究人員試圖把鏡像自我認知降低為條件作用的一種，即他們聲稱在鏡子中認出自己的能力是可以習得的。
So these researchers basically trained some pigeons to pass the mirror mark test.
所以這些研究人員基本上就是訓練鴿子以通過鏡像標記測試。
