Scientists have made an unexpected statement about the monkeys

Monkeys were able to see faces in random objects.

Parabolicheskie illusion familiar to anyone who has ever noticed how strikingly similar some random combination of objects on the human face.

It is considered to be something of a side effect arising due to the complex mechanisms of recognition of visual images, though some experts attribute to the effects of pareidolia culture and our habits from childhood to look at the illustrations and cartoons – images “humanized”, “animate” animals and objects.

However, a new paper published in the journal Current Biology, refutes this hypothesis. It Taubert Jessica (Jessica Taubert) and her colleagues from the us National Institute of mental health (NIHM) report the results of unusual experiments performed in the laboratory on five monkeys-the rhesus monkey. On the computer screen animals were shown 45 pairs of images, when combined in all possible combinations. In this 15 pictures showed objects that cause persistent pareidolia people, another 15 – similar objects with the illusion of not associated. Finally, the last third of the photos showed the muzzles of other macaques.

The researchers used a system for tracking gaze, by measuring the time animals spent, considering the left and right image of each pair. It is known that monkeys, like people, pay more attention to people and stare at them longer than other objects. It happened in the experiment by American psychologists, however, more than a macaque looked at the callers of pareidolia, and the sight of them linger in those areas that corresponded to the illusory eyes and mouth, the key elements that form the image of a face.

These results were so clear that a simple computer algorithm was even able to accurately predict eye movements of monkeys depending on particular image. The authors do not see other explanation, except that macaques are characteristic of pareidolia in the same way that we do.

paradox