A groundbreaking study from France’s National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment (INRAE) reveals that cattle (Bos taurus) can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar people and are capable of matching a recognized voice to the correct face.
Research shows that cows can recognize human faces and associate them with familiar voices. Image credit: NeiFo.
“Cows are inherently social animals, having been domesticated 10,500 years ago,” explain researchers from INRAE, including Ocean Amishaw.
“They possess exceptional eyesight and a remarkably wide field of vision (330 degrees).”
“While the social cognitive abilities of cows regarding humans have remained largely unexplored, dairy cows, in particular, are often in close proximity to humans from birth, being bottle-fed and milked daily.”
“Emerging evidence indicates that domestic animals can recognize human faces, yet such abilities in cattle had not been previously validated.”
“Considering the variety of species capable of human recognition, it would be surprising if cows lacked this ability, warranting further investigation.”
To explore if cows can differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar faces, the research team studied 32 Prim Holstein cows.
The researchers presented the cows with silent videos of known and unknown male faces while tracking how long the cows gazed at each.
They conducted tests on cross-modal recognition, showing videos of familiar and unfamiliar faces while playing corresponding audio from two men, both reciting the same sentence.
Additionally, they monitored the cows’ heart rates during the video sessions to assess emotional responses.
The cows displayed less fear during silent videos, gazing longer at the images of unfamiliar faces, indicating their ability to differentiate between known and unknown individuals.
When combining visual and audio stimuli, cows spent more time observing videos when the audio matched the visual face, suggesting they could pair faces with familiar voices from their herd.
However, none of the familiar faces or voices appeared to significantly influence the cows’ emotional responses, as indicated by stable heart rates.
“Our findings indicate that cows can indeed differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar individuals and construct cross-modal representations of these individuals,” stated the authors.
“Future studies should investigate whether cows adjust their behavior based on the individual they are interacting with, reflecting their agency in human-animal relationships.”
These findings were published this month in the online journal PLoS ONE.
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O. Amishaw et al. 2026. Cows visually identify and cross-modally recognize familiar human faces in videos. PLoS One 21 (5): e0329529; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0329529
Source: www.sci.news
