(Lack of) Human Evolution.
 

It seems to me that humans just don't evolve physically anymore (mentally maybe, possibly even "devolving" mentally at this point). I have a feeling if you were to hop in your time machine (you can borrow mine if you don't have your own) and travel 40,000 years into the past, you would encounter beings physically identical or nearly so.
So is our understanding of evolution completely off? Or is it that we have no need to evolve anymore? If the latter is true, what might bring us to the point that evolution is once again necessary?
It's an interesting thought and I just wanted to see what the great mind at MB (all three of them) have to say about it.

No offense, but I think yours might be - at least slightly! As a biology student, I see no real mystery here and I think the notion that there is or the idea that humans have stopped evolving stems from misconceptions about evolution.

What is evolution? What is it you think drives evolution? Who do well in evolution and who get weeded out and why? Some kind of answers to those questions will solve much of the mystery. ;)

I don't claim to be an expert, but I'm pretty sure I understand natural selection. Is the reason that people haven't changed genetically because we have no need to?; because we have been the heirarchy species for a long time and "survival of the fittest" is no longer applicable? Or am I once again off?
I don't mean to avoid your questions, tore, but I honestly don't know how to answer them without sounding like an idiot or a ****.

Out of curiosity, how fast do you think evolution actually happens?

Well, defining evolution is a bit hard but it's obviously an important thing to do if you want to say whether it happens or not. A lot of ecologists for example might say that evolution is a change in allele frequencies from one generation to the next. For humans, this happens for every new generation so then it's a question of how much. I understand however that you think that humans are not changing as quickly physically as we used to and then I guess you would have to compare. Do you know if we have evolved slower physically the last 100 000 years than we did the 100 000 years before that? You are also focusing on morphological and mental traits, but what about all those genes that you can't really tell that easily?


Evolution is a process of cause and consequence where those who are fittest - those who pass on their genes the most - add more to the human genetic makeup for the future and those who don't pass on their genes, well .. they don't! There are many ways to be fit, but to put it into some kind of perspective, I can make a simple example :


Imagine that there's a plague which kills people, for example cholera. The chances of dying from cholera is quite high, but if you have a specific genetic mutation, your chances of survival are much higher. The reason is the mutation causes a slight change in some ion pumps in your stomach cells which normally just renders these stomach cells less effective and people who have this mutation have more irritable bowels. However, when they are infected with cholera, the same mutation protects them somewhat from the harmful effects of the cholera bacteria which also have an effect on the operation of these ion pumps.

Before cholera occurs, most people don't have the mutation because having it has a slight negative effect on fitness. Diarreah doesn't make people pass on their genes more successfully after all .. But after cholera has occurred, people who had this mutation were much more likely to survive and then the mutation did add to their fitness and did make it much more likely for them to pass on their genes. The occurrence of the mutation after cholera has taken place in the human population is much higher than it was before. The genetics of the human population have changed somewhat and now they are more cholera resistant on the whole than they used to be - there's been some evolution taking place. Because the mutation is not beneficial in a cholera free environment, the frequency of that mutation might change again in the future until it's as rare as it was before the first cholera plague.


The example should be reasonably simple to understand. For a while, there's one selection pressure (cholera) which favours one trait (a mutation). When that pressure is gone, the trait is not favoured anymore. The point is that evolution of specific traits and most likely the sort of changes you are talking about happens as a response to selective pressure. What the pressure is and how strong it is varies with where you are in the world, what your situation is. Different genetic makeups do well in different environments, for different sexual preferences, diseases and so on. Evolution is just a consequence of natural selection. It doesn't stop when it's reached some sort of goal!

evolution is a constant process, it doesn't just shut on and off.

But isn't it possible that if a species reaches some sort of harmony with their environment and the environment itself doesn't undergo any major changes, that mutations aren't necessary, nor beneficial? That seems to be where we're at right now. Also, for the first time, a species is able to create things to meet our needs rather than having to physically adapt to them. For example, instead of fur to keep us warm, we make clothes. Instead of having to actually physically catch our food, we can grow our food or use weapons to kill other animals. Am I making any sense or am I just making an ass of myself?

That could be, but not for humans. Our environment is changing - global warming. We need to become climatized to changing temperatures and weather patterns in order to survive. That in itself is a form of evolution. Therefore, the evolution process is still underway.

Touché. I guess I rest my case for now.
Though if anyone has anything to add, feel free to do so.

One thing I find very interesting is that our self awareness evolved from a time when we did strike a harmonious balance with the environment. Food was plentiful and there were no major environmental stresses. This gave us the opportunity to relax in a way and "ponder existence". This lead to self awareness as we know it.

This sort of thing couldn't be expanded on today because of the intense amount of stress that is placed on all of us with jobs, money, and personal issues. However, if we were to find that harmony again, imagine what we could do with our minds at that point.

no, i think it's your understanding of evolution that is completely off :)

don't expect dramatic change so fast. 40K years is nothing at all on an evolutionary timescale.

but also remember that we humans have a tendency to resist change by adapting our environment to suit us, rather than vice versa. individuals born with sub-optimal traits are nursed and cared for rather than being left to die. disease rarely takes its toll on the week. etc etc. we've kind of put a wrench in the gears of the system.

but no matter, wait till a global disaster comes around and then see who's strong enough to survive in the post-apocalyptic world. it will take a lot more than ruthless inefficiency and a fat wallet :)

Some will always do "better" than others, even if it's purely by chance (genetic drift). Such harmony is not really attainable, but it is perhaps approachable to some degree. The Hardy-Weinberg principle says that there's an equilibrium (or harmony if you will) where allele frequencies remain constant (you could interpret this as evolution does not take place) in a population that satisfy some criterias :

"Random" mating - which means mates are chosen at random. You don't choose a mate based on favourable characteristics that make them attractive (assortative mating) and you don't do inbreeding.
Infinite population size (no genetic drift) - Basically, it has to be infinitely huge because then stochastic effects like rock slides killing off some germans here f.ex won't have much impact on the common human genome.
No natural selection - Nothing in the social, biotic, abiotic, whatever environment that makes one trait more favourable than another.
No gene flow - No input of alleles from different populations that may disturb the equilibrium.
No mutations - Mutations will create new alleles and if these increase in the population, that violates the HW equilibrium criteria.

In a population that satisfy all these criteria, the new generation should have the same genes (alleles) in the same proportions as their parent generation. This means that although the population may create different individuals, the genome as a whole doesn't change much - it contains the same varieties of genes at the same frequencies. As I wrote, this is not attainable. For example mutations do happen whether we like it or not and we do have sexual preferences. There are also a range of selection pressures, but they vary very much with where you are. Some places in the world, malaria can f.ex be a real selection pressure which favours some mutations. Where I am, it is not.

Whether or not there is gene flow is a question of definition because you then have to define the human population or populations that gene flow can occur between, so that's relative. Also, depending on how you see it, you could argue that the human population size is huge ;)

So sometimes, large populations of organisms may "approach" what looks like a HW equilibrium. Depending on how you define a human population - f.ex if you only look at Norway or some other western country, you could probably find that we do as well. However, it's never quite attainable and at any rate, it's only temporary. Some stronger selection pressures are bound to come along soon enough.

edit :

Remember that in my example, a mutation which caused irritable bowels suddenly helped people survive cholera. I mentioned malaria and the exact same thing goes for the mutation which causes sickle cell disease. It protects against malaria so while this mutation causes a disease which is not beneficial to us, it can be if you're someplace with malaria.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease

In other words, which mutations are beneficial or not may simply depend on the environment you're in and environments change over time.

were you completely ripped when you posted this?

^That (duga's post) is indeed a statement and I think you should always be a bit careful when making statements. At least ask yourself "how do I know this is true?"!

haha thanks a lot tore, you just rendered my entire discipline (anthropology) useless with one little post :D

Mine does. I was using this cream and it was gone for awhile. Other day my evolution started acting up and my foot went polydactyl.

:laughing:

Sexual selection has come to play a greater part, at the expense of natural selection. That's really the only difference.

How do you know it plays a greater part now than it did say .. 20 000 years ago? ;)

If you mean that people can possibly select the sex of their child due to things like the "test tube" baby or artificial insemination, then sure. But in regards to natural conception, there's no such thing as selecting the gender of the child. You get what you get.

It's a widely held belief amongst anthropologists. Granted, it is the type of thing that can't be proven, but it makes a lot of sense to me as well as people who study human development and evolution.

Edit: Just to expand a little bit, this theory is supported by fossil records. Without getting too technical, archeologists have found higher frequencies of hominid fossils in areas known to have been incredibly fertile and mild in climate at certain points in history. This means for a time those hominids were able to halt their nomadic nature and live off the fruits of the land. Does this prove that the result is self awareness? No, but what advantage does self awareness provide when it comes to basic survival? Not a whole lot. One of the only ways it would have come about is with the scenario I just described.

If plants and animals evolve in response to the changes in the biosphere; like a change in climate, maybe an introduction or disappearance of flora and fauna that would totally alter their way of life, thus creating a change of their position in the food change or eating habits, like evolving to elude beig eaten, or evolve to be harder, better, faster, stronger plant and/or animal etc. So if plants and animals evolve because they have to adapt, human don't have to the changing world around them humans can alter the habitat they live and create tools, instead of adapting on the genetic level like plants and animals, so why would they have to evolve - it would be a mute point.

Cheetas are lean mean hunting machines, they evolve to run fast, and take out their prey, on the other hand human don't have to evolve for speed they can just create say a bow and arrow right to hunt and kill, right? That would deminish the need to evolve into a fast running species or some subspecies of super fast humans who can chase after prey, while the rest of the species would live a more sedentary lifestyle as like being hunter/gathers or into some kind of husbandry.

Some scientist once siad that the human race could not survive as a species if it wasn't for their intellect. He point out that humans aren't the fastest, or the strongest, and without the domiciles they know how to build, and the clothes they know how to make, the human species would not be suitable to live all over the world like they actually do.

So in short it's human's intelligence that stops us as humans from evolving.

Sexual selection is roughly the same as assortative mating which means we don't pick our partners at random. We are attracted to some people and others .. not so much. We are selective when it comes to partner choice, the people we want to have children with. People we find attractive have qualities which typically makes them "fit", for example good mothers. You prefer a lady who has some boobs and tush to one which looks like a plank. Likely, boobs and ass is good if you want to give birth to and then raise a child. Attractiveness of the face (symmetry and so on) can be indicators of how fit people are in other traits, a sort of general quality indicator. Smell (sweat) is thought to give knowledge about the properties and quality of the person's immune system.

There's little basis for saying sexual selection plays a greater part now. At least I think so! If other selection pressures are higher, say food is sparse and there are more diseases (not saying that would be the case some tens of thousands of years ago, but), then finding a partner who is healthy and able could be arguably even more important.

Sexual selection is generally thought to have been extremely important in our evolutionary history. Some use it to explain why we are as kind and social as we are. The sex who has the most parental investment, the females, get to be choosy with the kind of males they want to have sex with. F.ex if you're gonna be pregnant for 9 months and then raise a baby after, you'd want a man who's loyal to you, kind and helps raise the child. Still, if it wasn't for this sexual pressure on men, it should make more sense from a selfish point of view to cheat as much as possible because as a man, you can potentually have children with very little investment. The investment is potentially as little as the sperm load you ejaculate and the energy spent courting and having sex.

So, some biologists believe a lot of our social aspects have evolved from sexual selection pressures on men from women. Some even hypothesize that women's gossiping is a way to exchange information about the quality of potential partners. "Have you heard? Lisa is so upset. She had an argument with Ben and he hit her!"

Needless to say, a statement that says sexual selection is more important now than before (when before?) is just a statement which is vague, non-specific and currently without support.

That's well and fine, but it seems a little naive to me. The rough history of man I've heard is that we started walking on two which freed our hands which is important as we're tool users and we switched from a diet based on plants to a diet based on meat. You get a lot more energy per pound of meat and you don't need a huge stomach to digest enough to keep you going. You also don't have to spend most your day foraging and then resting as you digest, something other plant diet apes have to.

Basically, we switched to a source of nutrition which allowed our brains to grow big and we had our hands free and we also got a lot of free time on our hands. When you don't have to spend all day getting food, you can spend it developing culture.

The people you talk about who lived in locations of plenty, I'm not sure what species of man you're talking about, but if they had a culture (could switch off being nomadic and choose to settle), then I'm thinking they were probably already self-aware and had been for a long time.

Even Coco was self-aware!

http://www.buckswoodside.com/archives/images/koko2.jpg

You should read my post on the previous page. I wrote a set of criterias which have to be fulfilled for there to be no evolution.

A quick comment still, you think we don't have to evolve in the same "arms race" as the fish we eat and the chickens we kill. This is true, we don't. But how about the viruses, bacteria and range of parasites that still infect us on a daily basis? We're talking here about organisms and evolutionary particles which have a very short generation time which means they evolve incredibly fast in this arms race against us.

We don't stop evolving. You seem to think it's something animals do because they "need" to. They don't, it's a consequence. I keep saying it is, but I'm not sure people get what it entails. Basically, it's not something we choose to do. It's not something we can turn off. Evolution will continue to happen as a consequence unless we can turn off the causes. If life as it is was constant and could not vary, not even mutate, from generation to generation, then there would be no evolution. However, hereditary variability is an integral capacity of life as it is and evolution comes with it. It can be slow, it can be fast, but the main point is it's happening.

Nice Daft Punk reference. ;)

From my understanding I don't think we are evolving at anywhere near the pace of other animals due to the fact that we change our surroundings to suit us, rather than changing to suit our surroundings.

Natural selection happens as the ones with the more advantageous mutations are more likely to survive and therefore breed, passing their genes on. With humans, there are all kinds of things we've made to make mutations to survive unnecessary; e.g. in other animals, a creature with a genetic condition would likely die before it passes the genes on, so the conditon slowly dies out. In humans, medical care allows people with these conditions to survive and pass their "bad" genes on (I'm not saying we should kill everyone with genetic conditions, don't get me wrong).

Well, that's the beauty of science, isn't it? If you are not convinced, you don't have to believe it. I don't see how your scenario is much different...the hominids I was referring to encountered a place with plenty of food including animal life to ingest. Hunting in scarce lands is still a mentally exhausting endeavor, so it would make sense that the mental development I was referring to wouldn't have happened unless animal life was readily and easily available.

I don't "know", I'm making an educated guess. :p:
Erm... Sexual selection - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That (Tore) is indeed a statement and I think you should always be a bit careful when making such statements. At least ask yourself "how do I know this is true?"!

So if some humans survive some pandemic and passes that particular gene that ensured their survival, the pathogenes only up the ante and move the goal post back and the advances that are made in the humans genetic level seems all for naught.

Well I didn't quite say we did or didn't, but the more pertinant question or point I was trying to make was can the human species be exempt from evolving into a new species? I'm more interested in the philosophical side of the question, is there a species that doesn't have to evolve, that it is near perfect for all conditions and that if it does have some mutations in it's genetic code at least it doesn't evolve into another species. Like hypothectically speaking maybe a million years from now, will the Human species be considered a fossil species like the Ginko biloba or the Coelacanth?

I don't seem to think that, it's the impression that I get from most scientist, so if I sound that way it's only the impression I that get from those scientist, and I am only relaying what they present to me.

Yes I agree, because the whole universe is mutable, only God is immutable. So yes it is a consequence of living in an ever changing world.

Yes, because all things change. When God created the universe He left a sign on the bottom of it that said "All things are subject to change." I keep saying it is, but I'm not sure people get what it entails. Basically, it's not something we choose to do. Everything in the universe changes. It's not something we can turn off. All things change from from the tiniest sub-atomic particles to the giantest cluster galaxies, everything changes. So yes since genes are part of a mutable universe hypothetically/theoritcally they are subjuect to change too.

thanks, I couldn't said it better.

I realize this is a parody of myself ;) I "know" this to be true because Koko is one of the most famous animals in the world, a gorilla which has been taught sign language and she definetly seems to turn attention on to herself and her needs. She is one of the well documented cases of gorillas who have passed the mirror test, a test specifically designed to show whether or not an animal is self-aware.

The reason I mention Koko is that it shows self-awareness should have evolved long before we got up on two legs and created nomadic (or not) cultures.


Well, again - evolution doesn't have a purpose, it's a consequence so it may seem like it's for naught. On the other hand, if we had not evolved in this arms race, we would not have been here to talk about it.

It sounds like you are making the classic mistake that we evolved from apes. I'm sure you know this, but for the sake of others I will just point out we did not evolve from modern apes. We had a common ancestor and subsequently diverged in our evolutionary paths. It is very likely modern apes evolved self awareness in the past few thousand years and in no way infers that self awareness evolved long before the scenario I mentioned earlier.

What I am suggesting is that our common ancestors some 5 to 8 million years ago may have been self-aware. The reason I'm using Coco as an example is of course not because we come from gorillas, but to show that all the great apes (bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas) are self-aware in mirror tests. The other great apes live lives which we assume are closer to what our common ancestors did. That indicates that our ancestors didn't have to crawl down from the trees, get up on two legs and shift diets before they could evolve to become self-aware. I'm guessing that our (chimps and humans) ancestor wasn't "dumber" or less able to be self-aware than chimpanzees are today. At least I can't think of a reason why that should be an immediate assumption.

That assumption is just as naive as mine. Either argument is just as founded as the other. What proof do you have that it was simply a high protein diet of meat and the freeing of the hands that produced self awareness? It is an anthropological assumption, just as mine is. Not to mention modern primates have had thousands of years to evolve self awareness...there is absolutely no reason to assume that just because modern apes are self aware it means that their ancestors were as well. You said it yourself...you are "guessing" that our common ancestor wasn't less intelligent. Apes are also not nomadic in the way our early hominid ancestors were, so it is a stretch to say we lived exactly as they do now.

I also still can't see why it can't be a combination of the two. The freeing of our hands, a meat diet, and bountiful environment all combining to support the development of self awareness. At the very least, fossil records support that at some point a group of hominid ancestors ceased their nomadic activities and settled for a time, which would only have happened if the environment supported such an action.

Ah, we're talking past eachother. I haven't been clear .. I think the increase in the size of our brains (which has been a trend in our history since we split with the other apes) were tied to these things and what makes that a likely assumption is that lack of sufficient nutrients like fat puts a constraint on the development of the brain. For example lack of vitamin Bs has serious consequences for brain development and will cause serious damage to our brains today, so it's a likely assumption that we had sources for vitamin Bs during the time our brains evolved.

I'm not saying that self-awareness comes from a change in diet and ecology, although I see how it may have seen like it. I believe self-awareness, in essence passing a mirror test, was something we could do before our change in diet.

Yes, it's a stretch, but since all great apes have the ability of self-awareness, it seems like it's the least stretch to me. It's a matter of parsimony if you want. If our common ancestor was not self-aware, that means that self-awareness evolved independently two or more times depending on which common ancestor we're talking about, one for each great ape lineage which stems from it. That means that you actually have to make a lot of assumptions. If you make the assumption that our common ancestor was self-aware, that reduces it to one assumption because the trait developed once (talking only about this branch on the tree of life).

Alright, they settled, but how on earth are you gonna figure out if they were self aware? You can't tell, so you need some kind of reference, for example Koko or other animals which are self aware like bottleneck dolphins. Because animals who by our understanding must have generally lesser mental capability than our ancestors judging from the size of brains and so on still have self-awareness, that makes it more likely that self-awareness would have developed before nomadic cultures and so on.

What I'm thinking is that you got smarts and self-awareness mixed up. Certainly there were things in our evolutionary history which had to do with food availability that probably made us smarter. What I'm arguing is that self-awareness most likely happened before that. If you were talking about an increase in general smarts and adaptability, I would've been on the same page as you.

Well, I think it is one should be a little reserve before coming to the conclusion that Koko was self-aware, (self-aware as human consider themselves to be.) All animals with sight are keenly aware of of the visual surroundings in the world around them, as well as other senses that sometimes we are not so keenly aware of as they are. koko may have been keenly awre of what a gorilla looks like. But is it instint of recognizing the gorillaz it sees or was it condition to respond that way? Did Koko's caretaker condition Koko to act like she was doing something that we as humans would consider self-awareness?

Take the beaver for instance, it acts like it's acting as if it knows what it is doing exactly when building a damn as if it were a human engineer. But it that the case? Does a beaver have a self-actualization that it is a dam-builder and goes about it's day with a steadfast determination of realizing it's dam-building potential and endeavors to accomplish it's goal of building a dam or is it just plain instinct?

When someone accidently step on a dog, because it is stealthily lieing somewhere on the floor where it can not see it, and it yeps - is this proof of self-awareness? Or it is just a reflex?

Grant it, there are animals are animals that are highly intelligent, and even as we speak in Japan they are building humanoid computer robots that imitate human intelligence. But do animals and humanoid computer robots have the same exact self-awareness as humans beings do? Or is it instinct and nifty computer programming?

^What you're doing is trying to turn this into some meta-discussion on what self-awareness is. That's all well and good, perhaps there are different ways one could define what self-awareness is.

For me in this thread, it's pretty straightforward. In biology, if we talk about self-awareness in animals, we need to make sure we're talking about the same thing and the solution is this standard mirror test. Although there are some variations of this test, it's pretty much standard in that it has the ability to recognize oneself in the mirror as the criteria for passing. Koko is one of several gorillas to pass such a test. It's also been passed by dolphins, a magpie and other apes.

When we talk about self-awareness and I mention this test, then I am using a definition of self-awareness as whatever it is that makes you pass this test. If you want to talk about self-awareness as something other than that, then chances are we're still talking, but no longer about the same thing and the discussion will suffer from misinformation and talking past eachother as a result. Saying something about when humans became self-aware becomes entirely pointless without a solid reference point as to what self-awareness means, so then we might as well kiss the discussion goodbye. ;)

I still stand by the belief that self awareness requires some sort of lax survival needs to develop (though I'll concede that how it actually happened is more ambiguous than I previously felt...thanks Tore), but my god every single discussion with Neapolitan degenerates into this kind of crap. He obviously loses the argument and then starts to pick out tiny bits he might still possibly be able to defend, however poorly.

Neapolitan, do you really believe the things you say or feel they form a cogent argument or do you just like to type and this is the easiest way to do it? I really am curious...

Falling back to discussing definitions or other meta arguments is really a kind of cop out the way I see it. It's usually employed when people are not able or willing to partake in the discussion on the level it's at, so they take a step back and formulate meta questions instead. It doesn't take much knowledge to say "but how?" or "how do we define this?" or even stuff like "how do we know anything is real?", so it's kinda cheap, I think. ;)

Sometimes such posts shed light on important problems and solutions that are found on higher levels, but mostly not .. at least not when discussing on forums.

Meta arguments are fine when someone actually steps back and says, "wait guys, we need to look at the bigger picture.." Not when someone is trying to pass it off as part of the current discussion, hoping it will distract the other participants enough to where we all agree with what he is saying.

Btw, tore, what is it you study? I'm a plant biologist myself.

Agreed! I'm currently writing a thesis on wind dispersal of flightless invertebrates in the high arctic, so I'm mostly working on mites and springtails. I thought I'd try and get a job after that (I have a few months left), but I I'm thinking I might study ped for a year instead .. then I can be a teacher which I figure could be something else to fall back on should need be.

So, no real work experience as a biologist yet :) At least not one which pays.

I think there is a big difference of me getting entangle in a discussion, I really don't want to discuss the self-awareness of Koko, it just seems quite odd you would except it so unqestionablely where other scientist don't. Quite honestly if your enamoured with the mirror test and I am skeptical of the mirror test there is no reason to say that I am turning it into a meta-discussion. We just disagree, and whether it is or not a meta-discussion I don't know, but all I know is that the consciousness of human beings is different than the consciousness of animals, and many in the scientific community will notice that as well, too. And basically I think that can be part of the discussion of whether or not humans will continue to evolve or not, because one has to look back at the past and see where humans came from and examine what seperates us from then and now to understand where the human race is headed. Will the future of the human race include a further evolution of the mind along with the possible hypothetical mutations in its genetic code in the evolutionary trajectory of the human race to the point it will turn into another species?

Well, anyway the more import question I asked but overlooked was . Like hypothectically speaking maybe a thousands of years maybe of millions years from now, will the Human species be considered a living fossil species like the Ginko biloba or the Coelacanth?

I don't mean to butt in and derail the flow or anything, but self-awareness, in context with what Tore is talking about (I.E. the ability to recognize one's self as an individual at least to the extent of differentiating between another animal and one's self via observable characteristic relationships) is most certainly provable with the mirror test.
The mistake you're making is thinking the idea of the mirror test assumes the animal somehow has the same concept of self-realization as we developed humans do, when it most certainly does not.
The very basis of the mirror test is to ascertain whether an animal (or human child, which have also been subjects in the mirror test experiment) can use visual or environmental cues to demonstrate a basic sense of self and individuality... or, SELF AWARENESS. Awareness of one's self, as being independent of any others.
Passing this test indicates that the subject already realizes itself as an individual, and recognizes that fact due to being able to distinguish between the mirror image of itself and the actual physical self.
Where one animal may see a mirror image of itself and attack it, thinking it's another animal (which happens), others may recognize that the image in the mirror is their own self and notice discrepancies that may have been placed on the subject for the test, and correct those discrepancies as any other self-aware being would. (which happens).

I think that's a clear example of the difference between animal survival awareness and an individualistic sense of being. While no one is claiming that animals ponder the existence of god or why they're put on this earth or have an awareness of personality, the idea of self awareness in animals is not a new phenomenon and is demonstrated in its true form whether you want to believe it or not.