法國國家科研中心的研究人員日前發(fā)現(xiàn),，蜜蜂的大腦雖小，卻能識別人臉和其他景物的區(qū)別，這說明它們有一定的抽象記憶能力,。
該機(jī)構(gòu)動(dòng)物認(rèn)識力研究中心的科學(xué)家在英國《實(shí)驗(yàn)生物學(xué)雜志》上報(bào)告說,，在蜜蜂的眼里，人臉被簡化成一幅抽象的線條畫,，兩點(diǎn)代表眼睛,，一條垂直線象征著鼻子，一條橫線代表嘴巴,。蜜蜂能將這樣的一組結(jié)構(gòu)記在腦中，與其他的圖像進(jìn)行區(qū)別,。
據(jù)研究小組的負(fù)責(zé)人馬丁·朱爾法介紹,，他與同事曾訓(xùn)練蜜蜂識別人臉，如果蜜蜂做出了正確的選擇,，那么就將得到一滴甜水作為獎(jiǎng)勵(lì),，結(jié)果他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，即使在比較復(fù)雜的人臉圖像前,，蜜蜂也能“照認(rèn)不誤”,。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推薦原始出處：
Journal of Experimental Biology 213, 593-601 (2010)
Configural processing enables discrimination and categorization of face-like stimuli in honeybees
A. Avarguès-Weber1,2, G. Portelli1,2, J. Benard1,2, A. Dyer3 and M. Giurfa1,2,*
1 Université de Toulouse, UPS, Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, 118 route de Narbonne, F-31062 Toulouse Cedex 9, France
2 CNRS, Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, 118 route de Narbonne, F-31062 Toulouse Cedex 9, France
3 Department of Physiology, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, VIC 3800, Australia
We studied whether honeybees can distinguish face-like configurations by using standardized stimuli commonly employed in primate and human visual research. Furthermore, we studied whether, irrespective of their capacity to distinguish between face-like stimuli, bees learn to classify visual stimuli built up of the same elements in face-like versus non-face-like categories. We showed that bees succeeded in discriminating both face-like and non-face-like stimuli and categorized appropriately novel stimuli in these two classes. To this end, they used configural information and not just isolated features or low-level cues. Bees looked for a specific configuration in which each feature had to be located in an appropriate spatial relationship with respect to the others, thus showing sensitivity for first-order relationships between features. Although faces are biologically irrelevant stimuli for bees, the fact that they were able to integrate visual features into complex representations suggests that face-like stimulus categorization can occur even in the absence of brain regions specialized in face processing.
