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(Reference retrieved automatically from Web of Science through information on FAPESP grant and its corresponding number as mentioned in the publication by the authors.)

Honeybees can discriminate between Monet and Picasso paintings

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Author(s):
Wu, Wen [1] ; Moreno, Antonio M. [2, 3] ; Tangen, Jason M. [1] ; Reinhard, Judith [2]
Total Authors: 4
Affiliation:
[1] Univ Queensland, Sch Psychol, Brisbane, Qld 4072 - Australia
[2] Univ Queensland, Queensland Brain Inst, Brisbane, Qld 4072 - Australia
[3] Univ Fed Sao Carlos, Dept Psychol, BR-13560 Sao Carlos, SP - Brazil
Total Affiliations: 3
Document type: Journal article
Source: JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY A-NEUROETHOLOGY SENSORY NEURAL AND BEHAVI; v. 199, n. 1, p. 45-55, JAN 2013.
Web of Science Citations: 16
Abstract

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) have remarkable visual learning and discrimination abilities that extend beyond learning simple colours, shapes or patterns. They can discriminate landscape scenes, types of flowers, and even human faces. This suggests that in spite of their small brain, honeybees have a highly developed capacity for processing complex visual information, comparable in many respects to vertebrates. Here, we investigated whether this capacity extends to complex images that humans distinguish on the basis of artistic style: Impressionist paintings by Monet and Cubist paintings by Picasso. We show that honeybees learned to simultaneously discriminate between five different Monet and Picasso paintings, and that they do not rely on luminance, colour, or spatial frequency information for discrimination. When presented with novel paintings of the same style, the bees even demonstrated some ability to generalize. This suggests that honeybees are able to discriminate Monet paintings from Picasso ones by extracting and learning the characteristic visual information inherent in each painting style. Our study further suggests that discrimination of artistic styles is not a higher cognitive function that is unique to humans, but simply due to the capacity of animals-from insects to humans-to extract and categorize the visual characteristics of complex images. (AU)