狗狗新技能：根据照片认出主人

Dogs may possess the ability to recognise facial features from photographs - a skill previously thought to be exclusive to humans and some primates.

狗狗可能拥有从照片识别面部特征的能力——这项技能原本被认为只属于人类和某些灵长类动物。

A study by researchers at the University of Helsinki in Finland used eye movement tracking to see if they look at familiar and strange faces differently.

芬兰赫尔辛基大学的研究人员通过眼部活动追踪来判别狗狗们对于熟悉人脸和陌生人脸的观察是否一样。

Their eye movements were measured while they watched images of familiar humans faces and dogs being displayed on the computer screen, as well images from dogs and humans that the canines had never met.

当狗狗们在电脑屏幕前观察熟悉人类，其他从未见过的小狗和陌生人类照片时，他们的眼睛动作被记录下来，

'Dogs were trained to lie still during the image presentation and to perform the task independently.

'Dogs seemed to experience the task rewarding, because they were very eager to participate,' Professor Vainio told Science Daily.

“狗狗们被训练在照片展示期间躺着不动，然后独立执行任务。它们的表现令人满意，因为他们似乎迫切渴望参与进来。”Vainio教授告诉《Science Daily》。

While it is well known that eye contact is an important part of communication between dogs and humans, no studies have probed dog's ability to recognise faces using eye movement tracking.

虽然狗狗与人类的眼神交流是众所周知的，但之前没有这方面的研究，即根据狗狗眼神活动追踪来研究它们面部识别的能力。

The team found that dogs fixed their gaze more often on familiar faces and eyes rather than strange ones, indicating that dogs were able to perceive faces in the images.

团队研究发现，狗狗们会将眼神更集中在熟悉的脸部和眼睛上，而不是其他陌生的照片，这也表明狗狗可以通过照片认知人脸。

These results indicate that dogs might have facial recognition skills, similar to humans.

这些发现表明狗狗们可能也有同人类一样的人脸识别技能。

The researcher also found dogs looked at images of dogs longer than images of humans, regardless of the familiarity of the faces in the images.

研究人员同时发现，无论照片上实物的熟悉度，狗狗们在狗类照片上的注视时间长于人类照片。

Furthermore, some parts of the images was presented in inverted forms, for example upside-down, as it is known that the human brain processes upside-down images in a different way than upright facial images.

此外，部分照片是倒着摆放的，比如上下倒立。众所周知，人类大脑对于正立和倒立的脸部图片处理形式是不一样的。

Dogs viewed upright faces just as long as inverted faces, but they gazed more at the eye area of upright faces - just like us.

但狗狗们观察这两类照片的方式是一样的，不过他们会想我们一样更关注在竖立照片上的眼睛部位。