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Discrimination of human faces by archerfish (Toxotes chatareus)
#MMPMID27272551
Newport C
; Wallis G
; Reshitnyk Y
; Siebeck UE
Sci Rep
2016[Jun]; 6
(?): 27523
PMID27272551
show ga
Two rival theories of how humans recognize faces exist: (i) recognition is
innate, relying on specialized neocortical circuitry, and (ii) recognition is a
learned expertise, relying on general object recognition pathways. Here, we
explore whether animals without a neocortex, can learn to recognize human faces.
Human facial recognition has previously been demonstrated for birds, however they
are now known to possess neocortex-like structures. Also, with much of the work
done in domesticated pigeons, one cannot rule out the possibility that they have
developed adaptations for human face recognition. Fish do not appear to possess
neocortex-like cells, and given their lack of direct exposure to humans, are
unlikely to have evolved any specialized capabilities for human facial
recognition. Using a two-alternative forced-choice procedure, we show that
archerfish (Toxotes chatareus) can learn to discriminate a large number of human
face images (Experiment 1, 44 faces), even after controlling for colour,
head-shape and brightness (Experiment 2, 18 faces). This study not only
demonstrates that archerfish have impressive pattern discrimination abilities,
but also provides evidence that a vertebrate lacking a neocortex and without an
evolutionary prerogative to discriminate human faces, can nonetheless do so to a
high degree of accuracy.
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