Excluding the different color or texture of their skin/fur
In: Biology
our brains are more attuned to human faces, so we’re more able to distinguish human features, like a large or small nose. it’s good for socializing, which is a very important driver in our evolution. we aren’t really good at recognizing animals’ faces (for what reason would evolution have given us the ability to tell two rats apart?) because we don’t need to. it doesn’t mean that other species have less visual variation, it’s just that we aren’t good at recognizing it
But they don’t.. Small example – No 2 tigers share the same coloration.
Furthermore, Different tiger species have different facial structures, on an even more localized scale there are differences between Buffalo-hunting Lions vs Antelope-Hunting Lions.
We don’t exactly stare at every single member of another species other than our own. So we tend to generalize – Varies textures of skin & fur is akin to skin & color variation amongst humans, largely based on Diet, Lifestyle & Climate.
We are wired to identify different people because knowing friend from enemy is important. Knowing which specific squirrel is in your yard isn’t that all that important.
Animals have just as many differences in their face, we just don’t normally recognize them. Exception would be animals you are very familiar with.
They don’t look the same relative to each other at all, two of the same species of cat will have totally different shapes and structures when you look close, it’s just at a glance they look similar. That applies to people as well, we’re just more used to distinguishing people’s facial features cause we interact with hundreds of different people daily for years at a time
Human faces look pretty darn similar overall, it’s just that you’ve got a lifetime’s worth of practice recognizing people and telling them apart, and we’ve also apparently got some structures in our brains pretty much entirely devoted to human face recognition. It’s a fair bet that many other animals’ visual systems are similarly optimized for recognizing/distinguishing others of their own species.
But it’s not entirely innate, there’s learning involved too. If you spend enough time with a lot of dogs or cats, you’ll start to see the variations in their facial features, and be able to them apart even if they have the same overall shape/size/markings/colorings.
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