The former US president was one of four celebrities used in a test of the woolly creatures’ face-recognition skills, along with Harry Potter actress Emma Watson, British TV host Fiona Bruce and American actor Jake Gyllenhaal, the research team said.

“We chose these people because there were lots of images of each person available on line, both front-on and taken at different angles,” study co-author Jennifer Morton of the University of Cambridge told AFP.

Video: Sheep can recognise human faces from photographs

“We also chose them because we were sure that our sheep had never met them in person!”.

Morton and a team trained eight sheep to recognise the famous faces from a photo of each of them.

Every time an animal picked the celebrity face instead of a different image on a second screen, it would get a food reward.

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The sheep would nuzzle up close to their chosen screen, where they would trigger an infrared sensor releasing a treat, if they had chosen correctly.

For the full article on The Citizen’s website, click on: Baa-rack! Sheep recognise Obama from photo