Giant pandas can discriminate the emotions of human facial pictures

Abstract Previous studies have shown that giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) can discriminate face-like shapes, but little is known about their cognitive ability with respect to the emotional expressions of humans. We tested whether adult giant pandas can discriminate expressions from pictures of...

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Autores principales: Youxu Li, Qiang Dai, Rong Hou, Zhihe Zhang, Peng Chen, Rui Xue, Feifei Feng, Chao Chen, Jiabin Liu, Xiaodong Gu, Zejun Zhang, Dunwu Qi
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Nature Portfolio 2017
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/253f89c66f3440c0965fe552070bd5bc
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Sumario:Abstract Previous studies have shown that giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) can discriminate face-like shapes, but little is known about their cognitive ability with respect to the emotional expressions of humans. We tested whether adult giant pandas can discriminate expressions from pictures of half of a face and found that pandas can learn to discriminate between angry and happy expressions based on global information from the whole face. Young adult pandas (5–7 years old) learned to discriminate expressions more quickly than older individuals (8–16 years old), but no significant differences were found between females and males. These results suggest that young adult giant pandas are better at discriminating emotional expressions of humans. We showed for the first time that the giant panda, can discriminate the facial expressions of humans. Our results can also be valuable for the daily care and management of captive giant pandas.