Study
Honeybee (Apis mellifera) vision can discriminate between and recognise images of human faces
Dyer, Adrian G.; Neumeyer, Christa; Chittka, Lars
Journal of Experimental Biology, 2005
Free-flying honey bees were rewarded with sugar for approaching one photograph of a human face and not others, then tested on the same faces without any reward present, including after a delay.
- Studied in
- Apis mellifera
- Sample size
- individually trained free-flying honey bees
Trained bees chose the rewarded face well above chance, and some retained the discrimination for two days.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Honey bees can learn to discriminate complex images including human faces, using general-purpose visual mechanisms rather than any face-specific machinery.
How NatureHQ reads it
Widely reported as "bees recognise human faces", which is true only in a narrow and specific sense. The bees learned to tell apart particular patterns that happened to be photographs of faces; there is no suggestion they perceive a face as a face, or would know you in the garden. The authors make this point themselves, and it is genuinely interesting: a brain of under a million neurons can be trained on a discrimination task that was assumed to require specialised circuitry.
- Bees were rewarded for a pattern discrimination; nothing in the design tests recognition of a person.
- Photographs were presented under controlled lighting at close range.
- Performance was above chance but well short of ceiling.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: The Company of BiologistsPublished by The Company of Biologists.
This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref and OpenAlex on 2026-08-11.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-09.