• Question: can animals have alter egos?

    Asked by evie1210 to Charlotte, Jo, Kevin, Louise, Valeria on 11 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Kevin Mahon

      Kevin Mahon answered on 11 Jun 2012:

      Very interesting question! To be honest, I don’t think we have enough understanding of animal conciousness for anyone to give that a good answer (I think) but I can think of an interesting example of an animal that acts completely different to how it normally does?

      Slave maker ants (very cool name) as you can no doubt tell from their name make other ants act how they want to. They do this by replacing the soon to be slave ant’s queen with one of their own and use pheremones (chemicals) to make the ants work for their colony! It’s pretty horrible stuff – some slave maker any colonies can have up to 3000 slaves working for them.

      So there you go – ants, acting completely differently to how they would normally. At a stretch we could call that an alter ego?

    • Photo: Joanna Cruden

      Joanna Cruden answered on 11 Jun 2012:

      Great question, I don’t think it is an easy one to answer for animals (or humans for that matter) and maybe one example is the Common Reed Frog because if there are not enough males a female can change into a male, it is accomplished by a chemical trigger to disintegrate the female organs and produce male organs so I guess that is a alter ego of sorts waiting to come out!

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