Pigeons Can Read Better Than Monkeys

haidut

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In intelligence studies of the avian world it is usually the corvids (crows, ravens, finches, etc) that take the crown of intelligence, but this study found pigeons to be not quite imbecilic either. When properly trained, pigeon reading performance was closer to that of humans then the one of supposedly much smarter species like baboons.

Pigeons Can Read A Little Bit, New Research Shows

"...Through gradual training, the birds moved from learning to eat from a food hopper, to recognizing shapes, to learning words. Kind of like human children? After narrowing down to the four brightest birds out 18, over eight months of training, the advanced-class pigeons were taught to distinguish four-letter words from non-words. They were even able to tell the difference between correctly spelled words and those with transposed characters, like “very” and “vrey," or words with different letters included to make them completely misspelled. In these instances, "the pigeons’ performance is actually more comparable to that of literate humans than baboons’ performance," the study authors write."
 

Regina

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In intelligence studies of the avian world it is usually the corvids (crows, ravens, finches, etc) that take the crown of intelligence, but this study found pigeons to be not quite imbecilic either. When properly trained, pigeon reading performance was closer to that of humans then the one of supposedly much smarter species like baboons.

Pigeons Can Read A Little Bit, New Research Shows

"...Through gradual training, the birds moved from learning to eat from a food hopper, to recognizing shapes, to learning words. Kind of like human children? After narrowing down to the four brightest birds out 18, over eight months of training, the advanced-class pigeons were taught to distinguish four-letter words from non-words. They were even able to tell the difference between correctly spelled words and those with transposed characters, like “very” and “vrey," or words with different letters included to make them completely misspelled. In these instances, "the pigeons’ performance is actually more comparable to that of literate humans than baboons’ performance," the study authors write."
(I'm only begrudgingly happy for them. NYC living classically ruined pigeons for me).
 

Spokey

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Excellent. I can get a sign made that says, "Please stop sh***ing on my car." :D
 

lvysaur

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I wonder to what degree natural domestication matters.

It seems like city pigeons must have undergone some selection that resembled a domestication process. They're not scared of humans, and there are lots of mottled coat variants.
 

sladerunner69

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Nikola Tesla wrote that the only romance of his life was with a pidgeon, he loved her "as a man loves a woman". He claimed that when the pigeon fell ill, it came home to him and died in his arms. That marked the end of his career as an inventor.
 

Regina

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Nikola Tesla wrote that the only romance of his life was with a pidgeon, he loved her "as a man loves a woman". He claimed that when the pigeon fell ill, it came home to him and died in his arms. That marked the end of his career as an inventor.
Dear oh dear. I just passed a little milkshake through my nose.
 
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