Cattle Can Recognize Each Other's Faces
Author Information
Author(s): Coulon Marjorie, Deputte Bertrand L., Heyman Yvan, Baudoin Claude
Primary Institution: Université Paris 13, CNRS UMR 7153, Laboratoire d'Ethologie Expérimentale et Comparée, Villetaneuse, France
Hypothesis
Can cattle recognize individual faces from 2D images?
Conclusion
Cattle can efficiently recognize individual faces, especially familiar ones, and their ability decreases with unfamiliar individuals from different breeds.
Supporting Evidence
- All heifers recognized familiar individuals faster than unfamiliar ones.
- Heifers had difficulty recognizing unfamiliar individuals with different coat patterns.
- Subjects treated different views of the same individual as equivalent.
- Social familiarity improved recognition performance.
- Heifers spent more time approaching images of unfamiliar individuals.
Takeaway
Cows can remember and recognize their friends' faces, just like we do with our friends.
Methodology
The study used instrumental conditioning with food rewards to test heifers' ability to recognize 2D images of familiar and unfamiliar cows.
Potential Biases
Potential bias in the selection of images and the training process could affect recognition performance.
Limitations
The study was limited to a small sample size of heifers and focused only on visual recognition without exploring other sensory modalities.
Participant Demographics
Eight Prim'Holstein heifers aged 9 to 14 months.
Statistical Information
P-Value
0.046
Statistical Significance
p<0.05
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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