Smart sheep that can pick out Barack Obaaaama!
YOU might think sheep would have only a woolly sense of what humans look like.
But with a bit of training, they are rather good at recognising faces, a study found.
For the research, Welsh mountain sheep were shown photos of four celebrities – former US president Barack Obama, screen stars Emma Watson and Jake Gyllenhaal, and newsreader Fiona Bruce. It was found that afterwards, the animals were able to pick these famous faces out when they were presented next to photos of people they had not seen before.
The Cambridge University study built on research showing sheep recognise their flockmates. The team showed the sheep a picture of one of the celebrities next to the unknown face, with a button below each screen that they could press with their heads. If they selected the button below the star, they got a reward of food pellets in a tray below.
To check they really recognised the stars rather than just a single photo, the scientists then tested them with pictures taken from different angles.
The eight sheep could still identify the celebrities from tilted angles, although their success rate was 15% worse than when the photos were face-on, according to the study, published in the Royal Society Open Science journal.
‘Still recognised celebrities from tilted angles’