# Honeybees can learn to recognise human faces, studies show 2026-08-10T09:24:35+00:00 | Technology | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 1 independent outlet Honeybees can be trained with sugar rewards to recognise human faces and can later pick out the same face from new angles and among unfamiliar faces. A 2010 study in the Journal of Experimental Biology found bees use configural processing, arranging features in correct spatial relationships, to sort simplified face-like patterns. They dismissed low-level cues like centre of gravity or spatial frequency. Another study showed bees discriminated a target face from distractors with over 80% accuracy. When trained faces were rotated 180 degrees, performance dropped sharply, mirroring a known quirk in human vision. Retests two days later showed memory held, with one bee scoring 93.9% then 79.2%. The researchers concluded the tiny bee brain, lacking specialised face-processing regions, can achieve genuine facial recognition through training. ## Coverage - timesofindia.indiatimes.com Tags: animal cognition, facial recognition, honeybees, insect behaviour, neural processing Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/honeybees-can-learn-to-recognise-human-faces-studies-show/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/honeybees-can-learn-to-recognise-human-faces-studies-show/#story-in-brief Review state: restored archive article, accurate at time of publication, not offered to search indexes.