This video is one the items of the supporting information of the 2006 paper, 'Self-recognition in an Asian elephant' (PNAS November 7, 2006 vol. 103 no. 45 17053-17057). The study titled has found that elephants, like humans, chimpanzees, and dolphins, recognize themselves in mirrors. Robert Siegel talks with Joshua Plotnik, a gradate student in psychology at Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center, who co-authored the study.

Brains are usually described as input/output systems: they transform sensory input into motor output. However, the motor output of brains (behavior) is notoriously variable, even under identical sensory conditions. The question of whether this behavioral variability merely reflects residual deviations due to extrinsic random noise in such otherwise deterministic systems or an intrinsic, adaptive indeterminacy trait is central for the basic understanding of brain function. Instead of random...