British researchers have
found that sheep can recognize faces, including pictures of their shepherds.
Eight sheep were involved in
training sessions, using computer pictures, and were able to make correct
identifications more than 70 per cent of the time.
That’s about as good as
humans, apes and monkeys.
They even tried tilting the
pictures to the side and the sheep did as well as humans in that trial.
Eight Welsh Mountain sheep
were used in the trials run by Franziska Knolle, Rita P. Goncalves and
A. Jennifer Morton of Cambridge University. Their findings are published in the
Royal Society of Open Science.
