Here’s one of the stranger celebrity sightings out there: Researchers have confirmed that sheep can recognize the actors Emma Watson and Jake Gyllenhaal.

　　这是一个辨认名人的实验:研究人员证实，绵羊可以认出演员艾玛·沃特森和杰克·吉伦哈尔。

　　"Yeah I think it’s very cool." Jennifer Morton is a neurobiologist at the University of Cambridge. "The reason we chose celebrities is we were sure they’d never met these people."

　　詹妮弗·莫顿是剑桥大学的神经生物学家，她说“是的，我觉得这非常酷。我们之所以选择名人，是因为要确保它们从未见过这些人。”

　　The experiment worked like this. First, Morton’s team trained eight sheep to recognize the famous faces. And the sheep correctly chose the celeb’s face over a stranger’s 80 percent of the time.

　　实验是这样进行的。首先由莫顿的团队训练8只羊来识别这些名人的面孔。然后，绵羊从陌生人中选出名人面孔的正确率达80%。

　　Next they presented faces at a slight angle. The sheep got only two-thirds of those right. But that’s on par with how human performance dips for the same problem.

　　接下来，他们呈现这些面孔时会倾斜一定的角度。绵羊识别这些面孔的正确率仅为三分之二。但是这类似于人类，人类对于同样的问题的表现会出现下降。

　　Proving that sheep have advanced facial recognition skills, the scientists say…comparable to humans or our primate cousins. The study is in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

　　科学家们说，假如绵羊有先进的面部识别能力，那么它们就与人类等灵长类动物相似。这项研究发表在英国《皇家学会开放科学》杂志上。

　　If you’re wondering, "Why sheep?"

　　如果你想问，“为什么是绵羊?”

　　"Sheep chose me rather than the other way around." There’s a good model of Huntington’s disease in sheep. So Morton says studying cognitive tasks like facial recognition in sheep--and the decline in those abilities in Huntington’s sheep—might offer insights into the human condition.

　　“是绵羊选择了我，而不是其他。”绵羊是一个研究亨廷顿舞蹈症的良好模型。莫顿说，研究诸如绵羊面部识别这样的认知型任务-携带亨廷顿病基因的绵羊的面部识别能力下降-可能会为人类的研究提供一些思考和见解。