LONDON: A species of tropical fish can differentiate between human faces, the first time fish have been found to possess such recognition, according to researchers.
Archerfish, distinguished by their black and silver striped scales, can accurately recognise one face from another during staged testing, a joint study from the University of Oxford and Queensland found.
The fish were trained individually to select faces on a monitor in view of their tank and pick out a face they had learned from 44 new faces by spitting a jet of water at the correct image. Fish prefer to eat plastic over food – and it is killing them, study suggests. Amazonian fish with ‘human-like’ teeth caught in San Francisco-area duck pond. Man rushed to hospital after picking up rare poisonous fish on Welsh beach. The archerfish picked out the correct face 81 per cent of the time.
During the tests the fish were able to identify the faces through detailed feature recognition, even when the shapes and colours of faces were altered.
It was previously believed that only certain mammals, and primates in particular, had facial recognition capabilities due to the large size of their brains.
Certain species of birds have also been found to “possess neocortex-like structures”, which aid with human facial recognition.
However results of the study suggest that, despite having tiny brains, some fish may have highly-developed visual discrimination capabilities.
Dr Cait Newport, research fellow at the University of Oxford and co-author of the study, said: “Being able to distinguish between a large number of human faces is a surprisingly difficult task, mainly due to the fact that all human faces share the same basic features.
“All faces have two eyes above a nose and mouth, therefore to tell people apart we must be able to identify subtle differences in their features.
“If you consider the similarities in appearance between some family members, this task can be very difficult indeed.”
