{"id":29740,"date":"2017-11-08T15:33:02","date_gmt":"2017-11-08T10:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tns.world\/?p=29740"},"modified":"2017-11-08T15:33:02","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T10:33:02","slug":"in-test-of-woolly-creatures-face-recognition-skills-sheep-recognize-barack-obama-emma-watson-from-photo-shown-a-few-dozen-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tns.world\/?p=29740","title":{"rendered":"In test of woolly creatures\u2019 face-recognition skills, sheep recognize Barack Obama, Emma Watson from photo shown a few dozen times"},"content":{"rendered":"

PARIS Nov 08 (TNS):<\/strong> Sheep learnt to recognize Barack Obama after being shown his photo a few dozen times, said a study Wednesday which suggested our four-legged friends may be smarter than we think.<\/p>\n

The former US president was one of four celebrities used in a test of the woolly creatures\u2019 face-recognition skills, along with Harry Potter actress Emma Watson, British TV host Fiona Bruce and American actor Jake Gyllenhaal, the research team said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe chose these people because there were lots of images of each person available on line, both front-on and taken at different angles,\u201d study co-author Jennifer Morton of the University of Cambridge told a French wire service.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also chose them because we were sure that our sheep had never met them in person!\u201d<\/p>\n

Morton and a team trained eight sheep\u00a0to recognize the famous faces from a frontal photo of each of them.<\/p>\n

Every time an animal picked the celebrity face instead of a different image on a second screen, it would get a food reward.<\/p>\n

The sheep would nuzzle up close to their chosen screen, where they would trigger an infrared sensor releasing a treat, if they had chosen correctly.<\/p>\n

In subsequent tests, the sheep chose the learnt celebrity face eight times out of every ten, said the research team.<\/p>\n

They then challenged the animals again, this time\u00a0by showing them a picture of the same celebrity, but using a new photo of their face tilted at an angle.<\/p>\n

The sheep\u2019s accuracy dipped to about 66 percent \u2014 \u201ca magnitude similar to that seen when humans perform this task,\u201d the team reported in the journal Royal Society Open Science.<\/p>\n

The animal\u2019s \u201cability to learn to recognize a person from a 2D (two-dimensional) photograph was surprising, since this requires complex brain processing,\u201d said Morton.<\/p>\n

In a fifth, and final task, the sheep were shown a photograph of their day-to-day handler \u2014 who they know well but have never seen a picture of \u2014 next to that of an unknown person.<\/p>\n

After some initial confusion, the animals picked the handler\u2019s picture in 72 percent of cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cHumans do tend to underestimate the ability of sheep,\u201d Morton said by email. \u201cThis current study adds an interesting new ability to the surprising wide repertoire of behavior of sheep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Face recognition is a critical social skill in humans, and we are able to identify a known person within milliseconds of seeing them.<\/p>\n

Many other animals are known to recognize the faces among their own species, while some \u2014 including macaques, horses, dogs, mockingbirds, and sheep \u2014 can identify individuals from other species too.<\/p>\n

The new evidence suggests that sheep can process information about a human face without requiring a 3-D \u201creal person\u201d, said Morton.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PARIS Nov 08 (TNS): Sheep learnt to recognize Barack Obama after being shown his photo a few dozen times, said a study Wednesday which suggested our four-legged friends may be smarter than we think. The former US president was one of four celebrities used in a test of the woolly creatures\u2019 face-recognition skills, along with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[874,733],"class_list":["post-29740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-paris","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29742,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29740\/revisions\/29742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}