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Fish Can Tell Human Faces Apart

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Fish can recognize human faces. Or at least, they can be trained to do so, according to new research from the University of Queensland in Australia.

Fish don’t have a neocortex, the brain structure that humans and animals use to recognize faces. But the research team has managed to train fish to tell human faces apart, reporting an accuracy rate of up to 89%.

“We show that archerfish (Toxotes chatareus) can learn to discriminate a large number of human face images, even after controlling for color, head-shape and brightness,” the study states.

Cait Newport of Queensland and Oxford Universities says the fish had already been trained to recognize images on a computer screen placed over the tank. The team used archerfish, which spits out streams of water to knock out insects and other prey for food. This means they already have good vision.

This species, known for knocking down aerial prey with jets of water, relies heavily on vision to detect small prey against a visually complex background and demonstrates impressive visual cognitive abilities,

the research states.

The team trained the fish using a reward system, giving them food pellets when they recognized the correct face. The fish eventually became very good at differentiating the faces showed to them.

The study points out that it must be a different brain function from that of people and animals, “There is evidence from a range of studies that some non-primate mammals can discriminate human faces. Species which have been tested include sheep, dogs, cows and horses. However, most animals tested possess a neocortex and have been domesticated, and may, as a result, have experienced evolutionary pressure to recognize their human carers. There is some evidence that animals lacking a neocortex, namely bees and birds, are capable of some degree of human facial discrimination.”

Crows and pigeons have also been shown to recognize human faces quite well, and crows can even recognize people wearing masks.

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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