Sex Recognition from Faces Using Neural Networks
Recognizing the sex of conspecifics is important: Expending one’s attentions Q or one’s seed Q on the wrong parity of partner could put one at a competitive disadvantage. While some animals use pheromones to recognize sex, in humans this task is primarily visual: “Many socially living animals ... recognize each other as members of the same species, as individuals, and as social partners by means of visual signals and communicate their mood and intentions by the same sensory modality. In many primate species the individual structure of the face is the most important visual characteristic of each group member” (Grusser, Selke, & Zynda 1985). A core issue is how sex is recognized from face; yet until recently this received little attention.