Golden Retriever Pup Is ‘Mesmerized’ by Her Beauty When Checking Herself Out in the Mirror

Does your dog ever notice themselves in the mirror? When our dog was a puppy, she'd "play" with her own image in the mirror, and wonder why the other dog only stayed in that one spot. Now, she's not interested in the mirror anymore, but Nova the Golden Retriever can't get enough of herself! Her pawrents posted a video at the end of November showing Nova starting at herself in the mirror, and it's just too cute!

Nova has her nose up against the mirror, eyes fixed on the eyes in the mirror. Her little tongue is hanging out a bit. She doesn't even blink! But what's funny is what her pawrents wrote across the video, "No thoughts going on there!"

In the caption, Nova's mom wrote what we were all thinking, "The tongue. I can't!" I wasn't the only one who thought this video was adorable - people left nearly 500 comments! @weratedogs said, "She’s just mesmerized by her own beauty!" and Nova's mom replied, "I tell her how pretty she is every day; she’s finally starting to see it!" @Kylee made me laugh when she said, "Me when I over analyze my outfit before heading out the door." @Snapple added, "She just know she looks good!" @ADDISON cracked everybody up with, "Wish I could send this to my dog."

Related: Video of Dog Admiring Herself in the Mirror After Leaving the Groomer's Is So Priceless

Do Dogs Recognize Themselves in the Mirror?

Different dogs have different reactions to seeing themselves in the mirror. I mentioned my puppy used to try to play with the dog in the mirror but is no longer interested in what she sees. Other dogs, like Nova the Golden Retriever, may be very interested in what they see in the mirror. But do dogs understand that who they see in a mirror is themselves?

The American Kennel Club explained that dogs lack self-awareness, visually anyways, "Humans are visual creatures; we experience the world primarily through sight. Dogs do not. A dog’s sense of smell is his main gateway to the world. This led Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, a researcher at Tomsk State University in Russia, to hypothesize that scent may be the window to self-recognition and possibly self-awareness in dogs. He developed the sniff test of self-recognition and found that dogs seemed to recognize whether an odor was their own."

After many tests by Gatti and other scientists, it was determined that dogs recognize themselves and others by scent more than anything else, "The behavior of the dogs in both experiments supports the idea that dogs can recognize their own odor as being from “themselves.” Dogs may not recognize themselves visually in a mirror, but by changing the self-recognition test to a sense that dogs rely on more strongly, their sense of smell, it looks like they pass the test after all."

Maybe Nova just noticed a pretty dog in the mirror...or another dog for that matter. One thing's for certain though, and that's that Nova doesn't know that that dog is herself.

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