Fish focus primarily on the faces of other fish

“Face” is a special stimulus in humans and, nonhuman primates, and some other social mammals; that is, they perceive the face differently from the other body parts and other stimuli. In these species, the face conveys much information, so individuals examine the face at first sight rather than other...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2019-06, Vol.9 (1), p.8377-8377, Article 8377
Main Authors: Hotta, Takashi, Kawasaka, Kento, Satoh, Shun, Kohda, Masanori
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/601/1737
631/601/18
Animal cognition
Animals
Attention - physiology
Cichlids - physiology
Conspecifics
Experiments
Face
Face - physiology
Female
Fish
Fishes - physiology
Human Body
Humanities and Social Sciences
Lasers
Male
Mammals
Methods
multidisciplinary
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:“Face” is a special stimulus in humans and, nonhuman primates, and some other social mammals; that is, they perceive the face differently from the other body parts and other stimuli. In these species, the face conveys much information, so individuals examine the face at first sight rather than other body parts. Similar to mammals, the faces of fish also convey much information, but little is known about whether fish pay attention to the face or face-viewing patterns. Here we document the face-viewing patterns of the cichlid fish Neolamprologus brichardi , which can distinguish between conspecifics based on facial colouration. First, we established a method to identify the point at which subject fish inspected. Fish often fixated in direction to their heads toward the object of attention, suggesting that the extended body axis indicated the attention point. Using this attribute, we examined the point of attention of subject fish presented with photographs of conspecifics and heterospecifics. The results revealed that the fish inspected initially and repeatedly at the face and the duration was longer for the face than other body parts.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-019-44715-0