Facial expressions in nonhuman primates are complex processes involving psychological,emotional,and physiological factors,and may use subtle signals to communicate significant information.However,uncertainty surrounds...Facial expressions in nonhuman primates are complex processes involving psychological,emotional,and physiological factors,and may use subtle signals to communicate significant information.However,uncertainty surrounds the functional significance of subtle facial expressions in animals.Using artificial intelligence(AI),this study found that nonhuman primates exhibit subtle facial expressions that are undetectable by human observers.We focused on the golden snub-nosed monkeys(Rhinopithecus roxellana),a primate species with a multilevel society.We collected 3427 front-facing images of monkeys from 275 video clips captured in both wild and laboratory settings.Three deep learning models,EfficientNet,RepMLP,and Tokens-To-Token ViT,were utilized for AI recognition.To compare the accuracy of human performance,two groups were recruited:one with prior animal observation experience and one without any such experience.The results showed human observers to correctly detect facial expressions(32.1%for inexperienced humans and 45.0%for experienced humans on average with a chance level of 33%).In contrast,the AI deep learning models achieved significantly higher accuracy rates.The best-performing model achieved an accuracy of 94.5%.Our results provide evidence that golden snub-nosed monkeys exhibit subtle facial expressions.The results further our understanding of animal facial expressions and also how such modes of communication may contribute to the origin of complex primate social systems.展开更多
基金the participants of the human test.This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(32101238,32471565,31730104,and 62006191)the West Light Foundation of The Chinese Academy of Science(XAB2020YW04)+4 种基金the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(XDB31020302)the Key Research and Development Program of Shaanxi(2021ZDLGY15-01,2021ZDLGY09-04,2022ZDLGY06-07,2021ZDL GY15-04,2021GY-004,and 2020GY-050)the Project to Attract Foreign Expert of China(G2022040013L)the Shaanxi Fundamental Science Research Project forMathematics and Physics(22JHQ038)the International Science and Technology Cooperation Research Project of Shenzhen(GJHZ20200731095204013).
文摘Facial expressions in nonhuman primates are complex processes involving psychological,emotional,and physiological factors,and may use subtle signals to communicate significant information.However,uncertainty surrounds the functional significance of subtle facial expressions in animals.Using artificial intelligence(AI),this study found that nonhuman primates exhibit subtle facial expressions that are undetectable by human observers.We focused on the golden snub-nosed monkeys(Rhinopithecus roxellana),a primate species with a multilevel society.We collected 3427 front-facing images of monkeys from 275 video clips captured in both wild and laboratory settings.Three deep learning models,EfficientNet,RepMLP,and Tokens-To-Token ViT,were utilized for AI recognition.To compare the accuracy of human performance,two groups were recruited:one with prior animal observation experience and one without any such experience.The results showed human observers to correctly detect facial expressions(32.1%for inexperienced humans and 45.0%for experienced humans on average with a chance level of 33%).In contrast,the AI deep learning models achieved significantly higher accuracy rates.The best-performing model achieved an accuracy of 94.5%.Our results provide evidence that golden snub-nosed monkeys exhibit subtle facial expressions.The results further our understanding of animal facial expressions and also how such modes of communication may contribute to the origin of complex primate social systems.
