Human beings can spot a sick person, on a photo, a mere two hours after he or she was infected by a germ, researchers said on Wednesday (Jan 3).
Such an ability to detect infection early, and from the subtlest of facial clues, has never been demonstrated before, but is presumed to be part of a crucial survival skill called “disease avoidance”, they wrote.
“An ability to detect sick people would allow people to avoid being close to sick people, and hence minimise the risk of becoming sick if the person is a carrier of contagious disease,” study co-author John Axelsson of Stockholm University told AFP.
The research team experimented with 16 healthy volunteers, all Caucasian.
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