Pigeons have better eyesight than humans do and have been trained by the US Coast Guard to spot orange life jackets of people lost at sea. They also carried messages for the US Army during World Wars I and II. (Credit: iStockphoto)
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Pigeons can categorize and name both natural and human-made objects—and not just a few. The birds in a new study categorized 128 photographs into 16 categories.
The finding suggests a similarity between how pigeons learn the equivalent of words and the way children do, according to Ed Wasserman, professor of psychology at the University of Iowa and corresponding author of the study.
“Unlike prior attempts to teach words to primates, dogs, and parrots, we used neither elaborate shaping methods nor social cues,” Wasserman says of the study, which appears online in the journal Cognition. “And our pigeons were trained on all 16 categories simultaneously, a much closer analog of how children learn words and categories.”
For researchers like Wasserman, who has been studying animal intelligence for decades, this latest experiment is further proof that animals—whether primates, birds, or dogs—are smarter than once presumed and have more to teach scientists.
“It is certainly no simple task to investigate animal cognition; But, as our methods have improved, so too have our understanding and appreciation of animal intelligence,” he says.
“Differences between humans and animals must indeed exist: many are already known. But, they may be outnumbered by similarities. Our research on categorization in pigeons suggests that those similarities may even extend to how children learn words.”
Wasserman says the pigeon experiment comes from a project published in 1988 and featured in the New York Times in which University of Iowa researchers discovered pigeons could distinguish among four categories of objects.
This time, the researchers used a computerized version of the “name game” in which three pigeons were shown 128 black-and-white photos of objects from 16 basic categories: baby, bottle, cake, car, cracker, dog, duck, fish, flower, hat, key, pen, phone, plane, shoe, tree.
The birds then had to peck on one of two different symbols: the correct one for that photo and an incorrect one that was randomly chosen from one of the remaining 15 categories. The pigeons not only succeeded in learning the task, but they also reliably transferred the learning to four new photos from each of the 16 categories. John le carre pigeon tunnel free download.
Pigeons have long been known to be smarter than your average bird—or many other animals, for that matter. Among their many talents, pigeons have a “homing instinct” that helps them find their way home from hundreds of miles away, even when blindfolded.
They have better eyesight than humans do and have been trained by the US Coast Guard to spot orange life jackets of people lost at sea. They carried messages for the US Army during World Wars I and II, saving lives and providing vital strategic information.
The researchers say their expanded experiment represents the first purely associative animal model that captures an essential ingredient of word learning—the many-to-many mapping between stimuli and responses.
“Ours is a computerized task that can be provided to any animal, it doesn’t have to be pigeons,” says psychologist Bob McMurray, a coauthor of the study. “These methods can be used with any type of animal that can interact with a computer screen.”
McMurray says the research shows the mechanisms by which children learn words might not be unique to humans.
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“Children are confronted with an immense task of learning thousands of words without a lot of background knowledge to go on,” he says. “For a long time, people thought that such learning is special to humans. What this research shows is that the mechanisms by which children solve this huge problem may be mechanisms that are shared with many species.”
Wasserman acknowledges the recent pigeon study is not a direct analogue of word-learning in children and more work needs to be done. Nonetheless, the model used in the study could lead to a better understanding of the associative principles involved in children’s word learning.
“That’s the parallel that we’re pursuing,” he says, “but a single project—however innovative it may be—will not suffice to answer such a provocative question.” How to enable game pigeon on imessage.
National Institute of Mental Health, National Eye Institute, and National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders supported the research.
Source: University of Iowa
G.I. Joe on display | |
| Born | March 24, 1943 Algiers |
|---|---|
| Died | June 3, 1961 (aged 18) Detroit |
| Place of display | |
| Allegiance | United States |
| Service/branch | United States Army |
| Years of service | 1943–1945 |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
| Awards | |
G.I. Joe (March 24, 1943 in Algiers - June 3, 1961 in Detroit) was a pigeon noted for his service in the United States Army Pigeon Service. The bird is part of the homing pigeons used during World War I and World War II for communication and reconnaissance purposes. G.I. Joe had the name tag, Pigeon USA43SC6390.[1] He was hatched in March 1943, in Algiers, North Africa and underwent a training for two-way homing pigeons perfected at Fort Monmouth, in New Jersey.[2]
During the Italian Campaign of World War II, G.I. Joe saved the lives of the inhabitants of the village of Calvi Vecchia, Italy, and of the British troops of 56th (London) Infantry Division occupying it. Air support had been previously requested against German positions at Calvi Vecchia on 18 October 1943. However, the 169th (London) Infantry Brigade attacked and won back the village from the Germans ahead of schedule but they were unable to transmit a message via radio to call off the planned American air raid.[3] G.I. Joe was dispatched as a last resort to carry the message and arrived in the air base just in time to avoid the Allied air force from bombing their own men. G.I. Joe flew this 20-mile distance in an impressive 20 minutes, just as the planes were preparing to take off for the target. Over 100 men were saved.[4][5]
On 4 November 1946, G.I. Joe was presented the Dickin Medal for gallantry by Major-General Charles Keightley at the Tower of London the citation credits him with the most outstanding flight made by a United States Army homing pigeon in World War II.[6] The award is also known as the equivalent of the Victoria Cross or the Medal of Honor for animals.[2] G.I. Joe was the 29th and the first non-British recipient of the medal.[6] In 2019 he was also posthumously awarded the Animals in War & Peace Medal of Bravery.[7][8]
After World War II, he was housed at the U.S. Army's Churchill Loft at Fort Monmouth, in New Jersey along with 24 other heroic pigeons. He died at the Detroit Zoological Gardens at the age of eighteen, and was mounted and displayed at the U.S. Army Communications Electronics Museum at Fort Monmouth.[9][10]