Share Golden paper wasps seem to identify one another by looking at the whole face, rather than relying on distinctive markings. Elizabeth Tibbetts Like humans, wasps seem to recognize faces as more than the sum of their parts Jan. 19, 2021 , 7:01 PM Golden paper wasps have demanding social lives. To keep track of who’s who in a complex pecking order, they have to recognize and remember many individual faces. Now, an experiment suggests the brains of these wasps process faces all at once—similar to how human facial recognition works. It’s the first evidence of insects identifying one another using “holistic” processing, and a clue to why social animals have evolved such abilities.