Animals & nature · 2016
Can trained archerfish tell human faces apart in pictures?
Yes. In laboratory experiments, trained archerfish learned to distinguish human face images in a task with two choices. They could still do so when colour, head shape and brightness were controlled. This shows discrimination between images, not recognition of people in everyday life.
Details
Researchers used archerfish to explore whether an animal without a neocortex—the brain region implicated in one theory of human face recognition—could learn to tell human face images apart. The abstract describes fish as apparently lacking neocortex-like cells and as unlikely to have evolved specialized abilities for recognizing human faces.
The fish were trained in a task that required choosing between two images. The first experiment involved 44 faces. A second experiment involved 18 faces and controlled colour, head shape and brightness; the fish still distinguished the faces. The authors describe the discrimination as highly accurate, but the abstract gives neither an exact accuracy rate nor the number of fish tested.
The central finding is that trained archerfish can distinguish human face images without a neocortex. It does not establish that all fish can do this, that archerfish recognize real people's identities, or which of the competing theories explains human face recognition.
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