Paper wasps can recognize each other by face

Published December 3, 2011 5:36pm

Think only humans or chimps can recognize each other by their faces? Not quite.

Researchers at the University of Michigan found paper wasps show the same facial recognition abilities similar to those of humans, tech site Gizmodo reported.

University of Michigan evolutionary biologist Elizabeth Tibbetts made the discovery with graduate student Michael Sheehan, with Sheehan saying it was shocking to find a "primitive" animal with very limited but highly specialized features can do the same.

The Gizmodo article said Tibbetts and Sheehan built a maze on the shape of a "T."

At the end of the two top arms they placed two photos, like two different wasp faces or two of caterpillars or simple geometric patterns.

One image would be associated with a reward while the other will not.

The study found the wasps had an easy time identifying the wasp faces that lead to the reward, unlike with the other image types.

Also, they discovered that when they manipulated the images and changed a facial feature, the wasps' recognition ability would diminish, Gizmodo reported.

On the other hand, a similar experiment failed with another kind of wasp, which did not have "the varied facial markings of the paper wasp and lives in colonies controlled by a single queen."

"Wasps and humans have independently evolved similar and very specialized face-learning mechanisms, despite the fact that everything about the way we see and the way our brains are structured is different. That's surprising and sort of bizarre," the Gizmodo article said. — TJD, GMA News

Tags: scientists, biologists, universityofmcihigan, facialrecognition, biometrics