 Another good example of how the design of studies in comparative cognition is value-laden is the mirror self-recognition (MSR) test, which was originally envisioned by Gordon Gallup (1970) to probe animals’ self-awareness. In this test, an animal is first allowed to become familiarized with a mirror. In a second step, the animal is anesthetized and an odorless mark is painted on their forehead. The behavior of the animal in front of the mirror is then observed, to see whether they interact with the mark, which would be a sign that they understand that the individual in the mirror is themself. Passing the MSR test is viewed as a sign of self-awareness, though whether it shows awareness of one’s own mind or just one’s body is disputed (Heyes 1994, 2008; Povinelli 1998). Leaving aside whether the MSR test actually addresses this capacity, which is an issue of theory-ladenness, we would like to draw attention to the methodology itself. As has long been argued, animals can fail this test for reasons that have nothing to do with their lack of self-awareness. For instance, gorillas’ failure to pass the test has been linked to the fact that this species tends to avoid eye contact with conspecifics, because it is considered a threat (Shillito, Gallup, &amp; Beck 1999). Other species might fail the test because vision is not their primary sensory modality. Dogs, for instance, fail the MSR test but pass an analogous olfactory test (Horowitz 2017). In this alternative, dogs are presented with urine samples from themselves and other dogs. Results show that they spend less time sniffing their own urine marks, which evidences some form of olfactory self-recognition. For humans, however, vision is the primary and most cherished sensory modality and this often leads to study designs that, like the MSR test, are vision-centered. Joint attention, for instance, is measured by means of gaze-following (Carpenter &amp; Call 2013), which Maria Botero (2016) has criticized, arguing that for nonhuman primates touch might also be a medium for joint attention to emerge.