facial recognition – wasp-style

A study of facial recognition, but not AI algorithms but rather paper wasps. Turns out they have evolved to recognize faces of other wasps. From the phys.org article:

“The really surprising conclusion here is that the most intense selection pressures in the recent history of these wasps has not been dealing with climate, catching food or parasites but getting better at dealing with each other,” said Michael Sheehan, professor of neurobiology and behavior, and senior author on the paper. “That’s pretty profound.”

Profound indeed – as always, humans can learn something from the “lesser” species. The original paper was in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).