Are Pigeons as Smart as Monkeys?
By Aulia Afzal
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Jumat, 23 Desember 2011
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Pigeons may not be so bird-brained after
all, as scientists have found the birds' ability to understand numbers
is on par with that of primates.
Previous studies have shown that various animals, from honeybees
to chimpanzees, can learn to count when trained with food rewards. In
1998, researchers discovered that rhesus monkeys can not only learn to
count to four, but can also pick up on numerical rules and apply them to
numbers they haven't seen before, allowing them to count up to nine
without further training.
With this finding in mind, psychologists at the University of Otago, in New Zealand, sought to find out if pigeons — another animal shown to count — have a numerical competence similar to rhesus monkeys.
"Pigeons are the perfect subjects
for visual tasks, because their vision is really good and they're
really easy to train," said psychologist Damian Scarf, first author of
the new study. "It appears that you can train them on almost any task
you can train monkeys on."
Scarf and his colleagues first trained three pigeons to count up to
three. On a touchscreen, they presented the pigeons with a set of images
that had objects of various sizes, shapes and colors. For example, one
set presented images with one yellow block, two red cylinders or three
yellow rectangles. To receive a treat, the pigeons had to select the
images in the correct object-number order, from lowest to highest.
Read full article here
source article: foxnews.com
source image: foxnews.com
Read full article here
source article: foxnews.com
source image: foxnews.com
Category: Science
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