Pigeon intelligence
Encyclopedia
Pigeon
s have featured in numerous experiments in comparative psychology
, including experiments concerned with animal cognition
, and as a result we have considerable knowledge of pigeon intelligence.
Available data show, for example, that:
All these are capacities that are likely to be found in most mammal
and bird
species. In addition pigeons have unusual, perhaps unique, abilities to learn routes back to their home from long distances. This homing
behaviour is different from that of birds that show migration
, which usually occurs over a fixed route at fixed times of the year, whereas homing is more flexible; however similar mechanisms may be involved.
Additionally pigeons may be among the very few animals to pass the mirror test
— which tests whether an animal recognizes its reflection as an image of itself — along with common chimpanzee
s, bonobo
s, orangutan
s, dolphin
s, African grey parrot
s, crows, magpies, elephants, and human
s.
and Monet
.
The birds were first trained on a limited set of paintings: when the shown painting was a Picasso, the pigeon was able to obtain food by repeated pecking; when it was a Monet, pecking had no effect. After a while, the pigeons would only peck when shown Picasso paintings. They were then able to generalize, and correctly discriminate between paintings of the two painters not previously shown, and even between cubist
and impressionist
paintings (cubism and impressionism being the two stylistic schools Picasso and Monet belong to).
When the Monet paintings were shown upside down, the pigeons were not able to properly categorize anymore; showing the cubist works upside down did not have such an effect.
In 1995, the authors won the humorous Ig Nobel Prize
in psychology for this work.
In a later paper, Watanabe showed that if pigeons and human college students undergo the same training, their performance in distinguishing between Van Gogh and Chagall paintings is comparable.
Similar experiments had shown earlier that pigeons can be trained to distinguish between photos showing human beings and those that do not, and between photos showing trees and those that do not, among many other examples.
In all these cases, discrimination is quite easy for humans, even though the classes are so complex that no simple distinguishing algorithm
or rule can be specified. It has therefore been argued that pigeons are able to form "concepts" or "categories" similar to humans, but that interpretation is controversial. Nevertheless, the experiments remain important and often cited examples in cognitive science
.
Domestic Pigeon
The Domestic Pigeon was derived from the Rock Pigeon. The Rock Pigeon is the world's oldest domesticated bird. Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets mention the domestication of pigeons more than 5,000 years ago, as do Egyptian hieroglyphics.Research suggests that domestication of pigeons was as early as...
s have featured in numerous experiments in comparative psychology
Comparative psychology
Comparative psychology generally refers to the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals. However, scientists from different disciplines do not always agree on this definition...
, including experiments concerned with animal cognition
Animal cognition
Animal cognition is the title given to the study of the mental capacities of non-human animals. It has developed out of comparative psychology, but has also been strongly influenced by the approach of ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology...
, and as a result we have considerable knowledge of pigeon intelligence.
Available data show, for example, that:
- Pigeons have the capacity to share attentionAttentionAttention is the cognitive process of paying attention to one aspect of the environment while ignoring others. Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive neuroscience....
between different dimensions of a stimulus, but (like humans and other animals) their performance with multiple dimensions is worse than with a single stimulus dimension. - Pigeons can be taught relatively complex actions and response sequences, and can learn to make responses in different sequences.
- Pigeons readily learn to respond in the presence of one simple stimulus and withhold responding in the presence of a different stimulus, or to make different responses in the presence of different stimuli.
- Pigeons can discriminate between other individual pigeons, and can use the behaviour of another individual as a cue to tell them what response to make.
- Pigeons readily learn to make discriminative responses to different categories of stimuli, defined either by arbitrary rules (e.g. green triangles) or by human concepts (e.g. pictures of human beings).
- They do less well with categories defined by abstract logical relationships, e.g. "symmetrical" or "same", though some experimenters have successfully trained pigeons to discriminate such categories.
- Pigeons seem to require more information than humans for constructing a three-dimensional image from a plane representation.
- Pigeons seem to have difficulty in dealing with problems involving classes of classes. Thus they do not do very well with the isolation of a relationship among variables, as against a representation of a set of exemplars.
- Pigeons can remember large numbers of individual images for a long time, e.g. hundreds of images for periods of several years.
All these are capacities that are likely to be found in most mammal
Mammal
Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...
and bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
species. In addition pigeons have unusual, perhaps unique, abilities to learn routes back to their home from long distances. This homing
Homing pigeon
The homing pigeon is a variety of domestic pigeon derived from the Rock Pigeon selectively bred to find its way home over extremely long distances. The wild rock pigeon has an innate homing ability, meaning that it will generally return to its own nest and its own mate...
behaviour is different from that of birds that show migration
Bird migration
Bird migration is the regular seasonal journey undertaken by many species of birds. Bird movements include those made in response to changes in food availability, habitat or weather. Sometimes, journeys are not termed "true migration" because they are irregular or in only one direction...
, which usually occurs over a fixed route at fixed times of the year, whereas homing is more flexible; however similar mechanisms may be involved.
Additionally pigeons may be among the very few animals to pass the mirror test
Mirror test
The mirror test is a measure of self-awareness, as animals either possess or lack the ability to recognize themselves in a mirror.The test was developed by Gordon Gallup Jr. in 1970, based in part on observations made by Charles Darwin. While visiting a zoo, Darwin held a mirror up to an orangutan...
— which tests whether an animal recognizes its reflection as an image of itself — along with common chimpanzee
Common Chimpanzee
The common chimpanzee , also known as the robust chimpanzee, is a great ape. Colloquially, the common chimpanzee is often called the chimpanzee , though technically this term refers to both species in the genus Pan: the common chimpanzee and the closely related bonobo, formerly called the pygmy...
s, bonobo
Bonobo
The bonobo , Pan paniscus, previously called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often, the dwarf or gracile chimpanzee, is a great ape and one of the two species making up the genus Pan. The other species in genus Pan is Pan troglodytes, or the common chimpanzee...
s, orangutan
Orangutan
Orangutans are the only exclusively Asian genus of extant great ape. The largest living arboreal animals, they have proportionally longer arms than the other, more terrestrial, great apes. They are among the most intelligent primates and use a variety of sophisticated tools, also making sleeping...
s, dolphin
Dolphin
Dolphins are marine mammals that are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in 17 genera. They vary in size from and , up to and . They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating...
s, African grey parrot
African Grey Parrot
The African Grey Parrot , also known as the Grey Parrot, is a medium-sized parrot found in the primary and secondary rainforest of West and Central Africa. Experts regard it as one of the most intelligent birds. They feed primarily on palm nuts, seeds, fruits, leafy matter, but have been observed...
s, crows, magpies, elephants, and human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
s.
Discrimination abilities of pigeons
In a famous article in 1995, Watanabe, Sakamoto and Wakita described an experiment which showed that pigeons can be trained to discriminate between paintings by PicassoPablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
and Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
.
The birds were first trained on a limited set of paintings: when the shown painting was a Picasso, the pigeon was able to obtain food by repeated pecking; when it was a Monet, pecking had no effect. After a while, the pigeons would only peck when shown Picasso paintings. They were then able to generalize, and correctly discriminate between paintings of the two painters not previously shown, and even between cubist
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
and impressionist
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
paintings (cubism and impressionism being the two stylistic schools Picasso and Monet belong to).
When the Monet paintings were shown upside down, the pigeons were not able to properly categorize anymore; showing the cubist works upside down did not have such an effect.
In 1995, the authors won the humorous Ig Nobel Prize
Ig Nobel Prize
The Ig Nobel Prizes are an American parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October for ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. The stated aim of the prizes is to "first make people laugh, and then make them think"...
in psychology for this work.
In a later paper, Watanabe showed that if pigeons and human college students undergo the same training, their performance in distinguishing between Van Gogh and Chagall paintings is comparable.
Similar experiments had shown earlier that pigeons can be trained to distinguish between photos showing human beings and those that do not, and between photos showing trees and those that do not, among many other examples.
In all these cases, discrimination is quite easy for humans, even though the classes are so complex that no simple distinguishing algorithm
Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...
or rule can be specified. It has therefore been argued that pigeons are able to form "concepts" or "categories" similar to humans, but that interpretation is controversial. Nevertheless, the experiments remain important and often cited examples in cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
.
See also
- Animal intelligence
- Bird intelligenceBird intelligenceBird intelligence deals with the definition of intelligence and its measurement as it applies to birds. Traditionally, birds have been considered inferior in intelligence to mammals, and derogatory terms such as bird brains have been used colloquially in some cultures. Such perceptions are no...
- Pigeon photography
- Project PigeonProject PigeonDuring World War II, Project Pigeon was American behaviorist B. F. Skinner's attempt to develop a pigeon-guided missile....
- Richard HerrnsteinRichard HerrnsteinRichard J. Herrnstein was an American researcher in animal learning in the Skinnerian tradition. He was one of the founders of quantitative analysis of behavior....
- Ludwig HuberLudwig Huber (biologist)Ludwig Huber is a professor and cognitive biologist at the University of Vienna where he is the co-founder and Head of the Department of Cognitive Biology....
External links
- Avian Visual Cognition edited by Robert G. Cook - a cyber book containing much material about pigeons