We know that our pet dogs and cats can recognize our faces, but our pet fish? A team of scientists from the UK and Australia have discovered that archer-fish(喷水鱼) can distinguish human faces!
This marks the first time that a species of fish has shown such an ability. Such abilities have been previously shown in birds, but unlike fish, they have been proven to possess structures similar to the neocortex(大脑新皮层), the researchers added.
“Being able to distinguish between a large number of human faces is a surprisingly difficult task, ” Dr Newport said, “mainly due to the fact that all human faces share the same basic features.”
During their experiments, Dr Newport and her colleagues presented archerfish with two images of human faces, and trained them to choose one by spitting jets(喷射流)of water at that picture. Next, the fish were presented with the familiar face and several that were unfamiliar, and were able to correctly pick the one that they had been trained to recognize, even when features such as head shape and color were removed from the selected pictures.
In the first experiment, the archerfish were tasked with picking the previously learned face from a group of 44 new ones, which they did with 81 percent accuracy. In the second, the researchers decided to make things a little harder. They took the pictures and made them black and white and evened out (使平均) the head shapes. You would think that would throw the fish for a loop. But no, they were able to pick the familiar face even then—and with more accuracy: 86%!
“Fish have a simpler brain than humans and entirely lack the section of the brain that humans use for recognizing faces. Despite this, fish may still be capable of finding the face they are trained to recognize,” Dr Newport said. “The fact that archerfish can learn this task suggests that complicated brains are not necessarily needed to recognize human faces.”
【小题1】What does the underlined word “they” in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Species | B．Birds. |
| C．Fish. | D．Abilities. |
| A．archerfish are cleverer than other fishes. |
| B．all fishes can be trained to recognize human faces. |
| C．complex brains are not necessary for facial recognition. |
| D．it is very difficult for animals to recognize human faces. |
| A．archerfish have a good memory. |
| B．archerfish can only recognize human faces. |
| C．people’s similar physical appearance limits archerfish’s facial recognition. |
| D．archerfish can recognize the familiar face even if its head shape and color are changed. |
| A．a biology textbook | B．a medical report |
| C．a science fiction | D．a science magazine |
