Rock Art Research

The article examines factors involved in rapid and easy visual identification of animals in life and art. It gives an account of what we term canonical form in connection with ‘basic level’ recognition, profile depiction and the concept of salience. In the course of this it introduces discussion of part/whole relations and saccadic eye motion. Overall it offers a critical assessment of the literature on the subject of recognition and suggests likely neurophysiological correlates for the perception of real and depicted profile animals.