A tropical fish so smart it can recognise human faces

This tropical fish called the archerfish can tell one human face from another despite lacking a brain section. Photo: AFP

A tropical fish can tell one human face from another despite lacking a brain section that homo sapiens and other “smart” animals use for this task, scientists recently said.

The astonishing ability was demonstrated in experiments with eight archerfish, a tropical fish species best known for spitting pressurised water jets to shoot prey out of the air. Instead of aiming at bugs, the archerfish were taught to spit at pictures of human faces displayed on a computer monitor suspended over their aquarium.