Many animals thus prefer bilaterally symmetric characteristics in potential mates.
Most research on the perception of bilateral symmetry has been conducted on humans with patterns composed of dots. Our program is to extend the range of stimuli to more naturalistic ones such as the insect below, and to test nonhuman animals as well. In this example, the asymmetrical stimulus in the top right is a natural animal containing slight asymmetries. The two dot patterns are created from the animals by picking out key points on the periphery of the images of the animals. With these stimuli, it is a hard task to tell the symmetric ones from the asymmetrical ones.