Wasps Can Recognize Faces
Social species relies on recognition to keep the peace, study suggests.
Scientists have discovered that Polistes fuscatus paper wasps can recognize and remember each other's faces with sharp accuracy, a new study suggests.
In general, an individual in a species recognizes its kin by many different means. But faces are extremely important to species such as humans, said study co-author Michael Sheehan, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
"Studies show that when you look at a face, your brain treats it in a totally different way than it does other images," he said.
"It's just the way the brain processes the image of a face, and it turns out that these paper wasps do the same thing."
