Sheep Able To Recognize Human Faces, Report Neuroscientists
Professor Jenny Morton of Cambridge University is a neurobiologist working on Huntington’s disease. Part of her research required testing the cognitive abilities of sheep.
Working one-on-one with a Welsh Mountain sheep, she was able to train it to recognize the faces of well-known people.
Says Professor Morton, “Face recognition is a sophisticated process, but they’ve got big brains, they see other sheep, and they use this processing to recognize one another.”
Following Professor Morton’s training, the sheep was able to distinguish the faces of celebrities like Barack Obama, Emma Watson, and Jake Gyllenhaal from other unfamiliar faces with near-human accuracy.
Looking at head shots straight on, the sheep had a success rate of eighty percent.
When Dr. Morton showed it a picture of Donald Trump, the sheep shot itself.
