The_Four_Toed_Edward
Well-Known Member
I was scouring the internet for scientific studies related to Russian Tortoises, and came across this article claiming that even though tortoises are anti-social, they too prefer faces.
"... The land tortoise genus Testudo tends to ride solo — that is, they go without parental care after hatching. Despite this lack of parental attention, moments after hatching, the tortoises are drawn to shapes that resemble a face, the study finds.
Researchers placed newly hatched Testudo tortoises in a box with an object at each side. The object either resembled a face (two eyes and a mouth/nose) or another shape — an upside-down face, for example.
The research subjects included 136 tortoises across five Testudo species. Seventy percent of the time, the tortoises preferred the face shape. They would orient themselves toward the object configured to look like a face, as seen below.
Since these tortoises are solitary animals, the research supports that faces are important to both social and solitary species. That lends support to the notion that animals' attraction to faces evolved earlier than expected.
...
Anti-social tortoises — Members of the Testudo genus don't have any post-hatching parental care, which suggests they have evolved without parental care for at least 30 million years.
These tortoises don't gather in cohesive social groups, and they avoid other members of the same species. As the study authors write, "from the beginning of life, they are not gregarious."
The new study demonstrates how tortoises that are well-established as anti-social are still attracted to faces. It follows that, evolutionarily, preferences for faces must predate the bonds of parental care.
The study authors reason that facial preference is an ancient mechanism, dating back to the ancestors of both reptiles and mammals. And, as the tortoise experiments show, it may be key to the evolution of both highly social animals, like humans, and loner tortoises."
Link to the article: https://www.inverse.com/science/tortoise-face-recognition-study
What do you think? Is this another example of the things known through first-hand experience before being proven by science?
"... The land tortoise genus Testudo tends to ride solo — that is, they go without parental care after hatching. Despite this lack of parental attention, moments after hatching, the tortoises are drawn to shapes that resemble a face, the study finds.
Researchers placed newly hatched Testudo tortoises in a box with an object at each side. The object either resembled a face (two eyes and a mouth/nose) or another shape — an upside-down face, for example.
The research subjects included 136 tortoises across five Testudo species. Seventy percent of the time, the tortoises preferred the face shape. They would orient themselves toward the object configured to look like a face, as seen below.
Since these tortoises are solitary animals, the research supports that faces are important to both social and solitary species. That lends support to the notion that animals' attraction to faces evolved earlier than expected.
...
Anti-social tortoises — Members of the Testudo genus don't have any post-hatching parental care, which suggests they have evolved without parental care for at least 30 million years.
These tortoises don't gather in cohesive social groups, and they avoid other members of the same species. As the study authors write, "from the beginning of life, they are not gregarious."
The new study demonstrates how tortoises that are well-established as anti-social are still attracted to faces. It follows that, evolutionarily, preferences for faces must predate the bonds of parental care.
The study authors reason that facial preference is an ancient mechanism, dating back to the ancestors of both reptiles and mammals. And, as the tortoise experiments show, it may be key to the evolution of both highly social animals, like humans, and loner tortoises."
Link to the article: https://www.inverse.com/science/tortoise-face-recognition-study
What do you think? Is this another example of the things known through first-hand experience before being proven by science?
