Facial Recognition in a Group-Living Cichlid Fish

The theoretical underpinnings of the mechanisms of sociality, e.g. territoriality, hierarchy, and reciprocity, are based on assumptions of individual recognition. While behavioural evidence suggests individual recognition is widespread, the cues that animals use to recognise individuals are establis...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2015-11, Vol.10 (11), p.e0142552-e0142552
Main Authors: Kohda, Masanori, Jordan, Lyndon Alexander, Hotta, Takashi, Kosaka, Naoya, Karino, Kenji, Tanaka, Hirokazu, Taniyama, Masami, Takeyama, Tomohiro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Africa
Aggression - physiology
Animal reproduction
Animals
Behavior, Animal - physiology
Biology
Cichlids
Cichlids - physiology
Color
Communication
Cues
Digital imaging
Evolution
Face recognition
Face recognition technology
Fish
Geosphere
Laboratories
Lakes
Male
Males
Mammals
Neolamprologus pulcher
Pattern recognition
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Primates
Reciprocity
Recognition (Psychology) - physiology
Science
Social interactions
Sociology
Studies
Territorial behavior
Territoriality
Visual stimuli
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Summary:The theoretical underpinnings of the mechanisms of sociality, e.g. territoriality, hierarchy, and reciprocity, are based on assumptions of individual recognition. While behavioural evidence suggests individual recognition is widespread, the cues that animals use to recognise individuals are established in only a handful of systems. Here, we use digital models to demonstrate that facial features are the visual cue used for individual recognition in the social fish Neolamprologus pulcher. Focal fish were exposed to digital images showing four different combinations of familiar and unfamiliar face and body colorations. Focal fish attended to digital models with unfamiliar faces longer and from a further distance to the model than to models with familiar faces. These results strongly suggest that fish can distinguish individuals accurately using facial colour patterns. Our observations also suggest that fish are able to rapidly (≤ 0.5 sec) discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar individuals, a speed of recognition comparable to primates including humans.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0142552