Excuse me – but ewe look very familiar
Excuse me – but ewe look very familiar
SHEEP use facial clues to tell which animals in the flock are their friends.
A report in New Scientist, March 11, says researchers at Cambridges Babraham Institute found that sheep could recognise other animals through looking at their entire face, and – like humans – used the right side of their brain to tell each other apart.
Researchers knew that clues such as horns helped sheep spot one another, but they also wanted to find out whether they could spot faces in a flock.
Sheep in the trial were trained to pick one of two faces at the end of a Y-shaped path, choosing between sheep they knew and didnt know. When they saw the entire face, they always chose the sheep they knew, but when the head and ears were covered, sheep could only correctly choose faces they knew well.
The scientists believe that sheep learn to use subtle differences – such as the distance between eyes – to identify their friends, rather than recognising fleeces. They also found that sheep use the right hand side of their brain to recognise faces – the only time this capability has been seen other than in primates such as monkeys. *