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Cognition

Your face looks familiar

Nature volume 481, pages 154–155 (2012)Cite this article

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Paper wasps of the species Polistes fuscatus live in strict hierarchical societies in which the ability to identify superiors and subordinates is crucial. Like humans, these insects have a cognitive tool kit for recognizing familiar faces.

The ability to recognize individuals can convey significant benefits to social animals. In humans, the capacity to recognize different faces is crucial for making individual behaviour predictable for other members of a group — for keeping track of who is aggressive, bold or wise — and so for knowing everyone's place in a family or society. Moreover, there is strong evidence1,2 that primate brains contain specialized modules for face processing and recognition. Writing in Science, Sheehan and Tibbetts3 present evidence that an insect, the paper wasp Polistes fuscatus, not only recognizes the faces of individuals of the same species, but is a veritable expert at face discrimination.

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Figure 1: Face learning by paper wasps.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lars Chittka is in the Biological and Experimental Psychology Group, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK.,

    Lars Chittka

  2. Adrian Dyer is in the School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia.,

    Adrian Dyer

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  1. Lars Chittka
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  2. Adrian Dyer
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Correspondence to Lars Chittka or Adrian Dyer.

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Chittka, L., Dyer, A. Your face looks familiar. Nature 481, 154–155 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/481154a

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