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Science Quickly

Sheep's Face-Reading Skills Stand Out from the Flock

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2017

⏱️ 2 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With some training, sheep were able to select a celebrity's face over that of a stranger they'd never seen. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

0:22.7

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

0:33.7

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher in Taliatta.

0:39.1

Here's one of the stranger celebrity sightings out there. Researchers have confirmed that sheep

0:44.0

can recognize the actors Emma Watson and Jake Gyllenhaal. Yeah, I think it's very cool.

0:48.8

Jennifer Morton is a neurobiologist at the University of Cambridge. The reason we chose

0:52.7

the celebrities because we're sure they'd never met these people.

0:55.4

The experiment worked like this.

0:57.2

First, Morton's team trained eight sheep to recognize the famous faces.

1:01.5

And the sheep correctly chose the celebs face over a stranger's 80% of the time.

1:06.7

Next, they presented faces at a slight angle.

1:09.2

The sheep got only two-thirds of those right.

1:11.5

But that's about on par with how human performance dips for the same task,

1:15.6

proving that sheep have advanced facial recognition skills, the scientists say,

1:19.8

comparable to humans or our primate cousins.

1:22.6

The studies in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

1:25.7

If you're wondering, why sheep?

1:29.1

Sheep shows me rather than the other way around. There's a good model of Huntington's disease in sheep. So Morton says

1:33.6

studying cognitive tests like facial recognition in sheep, and the corresponding decline in those

...

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