http://www.sciencenewsdaily.org/story-8953.html Many researchers traditionally believed facial recognition required a large brain, and possibly a specialized area of that organ dedicated to processing face information. The bee finding casts doubt on that, said Adrian G. Dyer, the lead researcher in the study.
He recalls that when he made the discovery, it startled him so much that he called out to a colleague, telling her to come quickly because “no one’s going to believe it—and bring a camera!”
Dyer said that to his knowledge, the finding is the first time an invertebrate has shown ability to recognize faces of other species. But not all bees were up to the task: some flunked it, he said, although this seemed due more to a failure to grasp how the experiment worked than to poor facial recognition specifically...............snip..............
The bees learned to distinguish the correct face from the wrong one with better than 80 percent accuracy, even when the faces were similar, and regardless of where the photos were placed, the researchers found. Also, just like humans, the bees performed worse when the faces were flipped upside-down.