Corgi Puppy Is Charmed And Bewitched By Furball In The Mirror

If you’re a corgi puppy, it goes without saying that there’s no cuter playmate than, well … a puppy just like you.

That’s clearly the dilemma faced by Smalls the corgi, who seems to want nothing more than the companionship of the canine in the mirror who also has a tennis ball.

Dogs looking into mirrors typically either ignore the reflected image, or behave as if it is another dog altogether.

"Dogs are very intelligent and adaptable creatures who, like countless others, lack the cognitive development necessary to self-recognize visually, whether in a mirror, on a video or in a photo,” animal behavior clinician Liz Stelow told National Geographic.

However, this does not necessarily mean that dogs aren’t self-aware — the lack of recognition could just be because dogs are less visual than humans and apes, biologist Mark Bekoff told Psychology Today. For dogs, which communicate heavily through scent, a better test of “self-awareness” may be to determine if dogs can recognize that their own smell belongs to them -- something that Bekoff believes they can do.