It barely occupies the tip of an index finger, but the pigeon brain is a box of surprises for neuroscientists. For example, researchers at the University of Iowa have just discovered that these birds are capable of categorizing objects in a mental operation similar to that performed by children when they learn words .
Specifically, the pigeons classified 128 photographs into 16 simple categories , as explained by the authors of the experiment in Cognition magazine: child, bottle, cake, car, cookie, dog, duck, fish, flower, hat, key, pen, phone, shoe, tree and plane. When they saw the image, the birds had to click on one of two symbols within reach of their beaks: one corresponded to the object and the other was generated randomly by the computer among the 15 remaining classifications. The birds not only learned to answer correctly, but then applied the skill to catalog new photos. The researchers believe that this method could be applied to research with other animals.
The study is the culmination of a project that began in 1988, when specialists in animal intelligence found that pigeons were capable of assigning objects to four categories . Now it has been shown that they are even smarter than previously thought, and that the associative mechanisms by which children learn words are not unique to the human species.
