Pigeons may be ubiquitous, but they’re also brainy, with surprising numerical competence.
Pigeons may be ubiquitous, but they're also brainy, according to a
new study that found these birds are on par with primates when it comes
to numerical competence.
The study, published in the latest issue of the journal Science,
discovered that pigeons can discriminate against different amounts of
number-like objects, order pairs, and learn abstract mathematical rules.
Aside from humans, only rhesus monkeys have exhibited equivalent
skills.
Could pigeons then be the Einsteins of the bird world?
"It would be fair to say that, even among birds, pigeons are not
thought to be the sharpest crayon in the box," lead author Damian Scarf
told Discovery News. "I think that this ability may be widespread among
birds. There is already clear evidence that it is widespread among
primates."
Scarf, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at
the University of Otago, and colleagues Harlene Hayne and Michael
Colombo began the study by first teaching pigeons how to order the
numbers 1, 2 and 3.
To do this, they presented the pigeons with three images containing
one, two, or three objects. All three images appeared at once on a touch
screen and the pigeons pecked the screen to make a response. If they
correctly accomplished the task -- pecking the images in ascending order
-- they received a wheat snacmore discovery news
