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They might not always know the difference between a straw and a french fry, but pigeons can judge each other's leadership skills. They might also be able to read the news about their fallen leaders. Well, almost. How they learn to recognize words could provide insights on the origins of language, according to a study published in PNAS.
Through gradual training, the birds moved from learning to eat from a food hopper, to recognizing shapes, to learning words. Kind of like human children?
After narrowing down to the four brightest birds out 18, over eight months of training, the advanced-class pigeons were taught to distinguish four-letter words from non-words. They were even able to tell the difference between correctly spelled words and those with transposed characters, like “very” and “vrey," or words with different letters included to make them completely misspelled.
In these instances, "the pigeons’ performance is actually more comparable to that of literate humans than baboons’ performance," the study authors write.
www.popsci.com
Through gradual training, the birds moved from learning to eat from a food hopper, to recognizing shapes, to learning words. Kind of like human children?
After narrowing down to the four brightest birds out 18, over eight months of training, the advanced-class pigeons were taught to distinguish four-letter words from non-words. They were even able to tell the difference between correctly spelled words and those with transposed characters, like “very” and “vrey," or words with different letters included to make them completely misspelled.
In these instances, "the pigeons’ performance is actually more comparable to that of literate humans than baboons’ performance," the study authors write.
Pigeons Can Read A Little Bit, New Research Shows
They might also be able to read the news about their fallen leaders. Well, almost. How they learn to recognize words could provide insights on the origins of language, according to a new study
www.popsci.com
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