A new study by researchers at Cambridge University indicates that sheep can be taught to recognize faces using food rewards.

According to Cambridge News, as part of the study, the researchers trained sheep to recognize four celebrities - TV journalist Fiona Bruce, American actor Jake Gyllenhaal, Harry Potter star Emma Watson and Barack Obama.

Each sheep was then placed in a special pen, where it was shown two images - one of which was one of the “target” celebrities. If the sheep chose the celebrity image, a dispenser would reward the sheep with cereal pellets. If the sheep instead approached the other image, a buzzer would sound and no reward was given.

According to the results of the study, the sheep chose the “target” image eight times out of ten.

"The results of our study show that sheep have advanced face-recognition abilities, similar to those of humans and nonhuman primates,” the researchers concluded.

They believe that the ability of sheep to recognize faces can be used in the future to investigate human brain disorders, such as Huntington’s disease, that affect mental processing.