Jul 25 2009
Recognizing Kin
Meet Mary (not her real name). Could you recognize Mary in a line-up of other rhesus monkey young ones?
Mary’s troop-mates can certainly identify her. For a social species, being able to differentiate one group member from another is very important. New research has found -
[R]hesus monkeys and humans share a specific perceptual mechanism, configural perception, for discriminating among the numerous faces they encounter daily.
[....]
“Humans and other social primates need to recognize other individuals and to discriminate kin from non-kin, friend from foe and allies from antagonists,” said lead researcher Robert R. Hampton of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory’s Department of Psychology.
When I look at Mary this is one of the things I see: a distant relative. And science has informed me that her brain works something like mine. In this case –when identifying individual others, including kin.
