Quiz: Do You Always Remember a (Bear) Face?

You know how embarrassing it is to introduce yourself to someone at a party, and realize too late that you've already met? Just imagine if that person was a bear. To prevent moments like this, San Diego Zoo conservation researcher Russell Van Horn and his colleagues asked people to try identifying bears by their faces. Actually, their motivation had nothing to do with awkward party moments. It had more to do with citizen science. Can volunteers be trusted to look at photos from a camera trap, say, and report how many different animals have walked past? What about scientists? If someone thinks she's seen ten different animals when she's only seen five, the population count for an area could end up artificially high. What looks like a healthy population could really be a lonely few animals who are hard to recognize in different lighting. The researchers gathered photos of Andean ...