A new study says Polistes fuscatus paper wasps are able to remember other wasps! “Studies show that when you look at a face, your brain treats it in a totally different way than it does other images,” says Michael Sheehan, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the study’s co-author. “It’s just the way the brain processes the image of a face, and it turns out that these paper wasps do the same thing.”

Why might recognizing other wasps be helpful? It might help keep the peace between the wasps. “Being able to recognize each other helps them understand who’s already beaten who, who has higher ranking in the hierarchy, and this helps to keep the peace. When they aren’t able to recognize each other, [as] we’ve shown before, there was more aggression,” says Sheehan.

Learn more about this study on National Geographic News.

Get the facts on honeybees in the Creature Feature.

Diagram courtesy Science/AAAS