In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their work, which involved studying brain capabilities in the species of fish.

The bluestreak cleaner wrasse specializes in removing dead skin and other materials from other fish or sea creatures.

Prior work has shown that the small blue-and-silver-striped fish are capable of passing the mirror test.

The research team suggests their findings indicate that self-awareness and self-recognition may be more widespread in the animal kingdom than has been previously thought.

More information: Masanori Kohda et al, Cleaner fish recognize self in a mirror via self-face recognition like humans, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(2023).

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