Most Active Stories Fri December 23, 2011 Turns Out, Pigeons Are
Just As Good As Monkeys When It Comes To Math Scientists have
found that pigeons are much smarter than we give them credit for
and can be taught some complex abstract math. This is stunning
because it's trait that has only been shown in primates. But
according to a report in the current issue of the journal
Science, researchers were able to teach pigeons abstract rules
about math. "Our research not only shows that pigeons are also
members of this exclusive club, but, somewhat surprisingly,
their performance is on a par with that of monkeys," the study's
lead author Dr. Damian Scarf, a researcher at the University of
Otago in New Zealand, said in a press release. So how did the
researchers test this? Here's how Discovery News explains the
experiment: "To do this, they presented the pigeons with three
images containing one, two, or three objects. All three images
appeared at once on a touch screen and the pigeons pecked the
screen to make a respon