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. 2000 Mar;114(1):47-60.
doi: 10.1037/0735-7036.114.1.47.

Recognizing facial cues: individual discrimination by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

L A Parr  1 , J T Winslow, W D Hopkins, F B de Waal
Affiliations

Recognizing facial cues: individual discrimination by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

L A Parr et al. J Comp Psychol. 2000 Mar.

Abstract

Faces are one of the most salient classes of stimuli involved in social communication. Three experiments compared face-recognition abilities in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). In the face-matching task, the chimpanzees matched identical photographs of conspecifics' faces on Trial 1, and the rhesus monkeys did the same after 4 generalization trials. In the individual-recognition task, the chimpanzees matched 2 different photographs of the same individual after 2 trials, and the rhesus monkeys generalized in fewer than 6 trials. The feature-masking task showed that the eyes were the most important cue for individual recognition. Thus, chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys are able to use facial cues to discriminate unfamiliar conspecifics. Although the rhesus monkeys required many trials to learn the tasks, this is not evidence that faces are not as important social stimuli for them as for the chimpanzees.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The mean acquisition data for rhesus monkeys in the face-matching task in Experiment 1. Data are presented as the percentage of correct responses over each 100-trial block. The final performance criterion of 80% correct is marked.
Figure 2
Figure 2
An example of a rhesus monkey individual-discrimination trial presented in the individual-discrimination task in Experiment 2. The correct choice is the individual presented on the bottom left.
Figure 3
Figure 3
A comparison between the mean performance (+SEM) of chimpanzees on the first and second exposures to the tasks in Experiments 1 and 2, face matching and individual discrimination, respectively.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The mean acquisition data for rhesus monkeys in Experiment 2. Data are presented as the percentage of correct responses over each 100-trial block. The final performance criterion of 80% correct is marked.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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