Japanese researchers from Keio University in Tokyo, Japan, have shown that these birds have advanced perceptual abilities that allow them to differentiate a good picture from a bad one . In other words, they recognize beauty in the same way that humans do.
The team, which had previously published research claiming that pigeons can distinguish between a Monet and a Picasso, had set out to find out whether the animals displayed any kind of preference. For their experiment, they selected paintings made by schoolchildren with watercolor and pastels and classified by their teachers as "good" or "bad." They then showed the images to a group of pigeons on a screen, so that they only gave them a reward (food) if they "bit" on the ones that had a certain artistic quality. After several weeks, the pigeons learned to choose only the good "works of art" , and they would immediately distinguish them from the bad even if it was the first time they saw them. The results, which have been published in the journal Animal Cognition , suggest that birds may have an innate sense of beauty that is very similar to that of human beings.
