James Brody
January 8th, 2009, 01:25 PM
The image of a chimp touching a mark on himself but seen only in a mirror has been duplicated with elephants and dolphins. Fred Skinner probably smiles about now: pigeons can also do it! One early hint - back in the late '60s - of a pigeon's abilities was a study that first trained them to discriminate between people and houses (not a huge deal), reinforcing the birds for choosing people. Test consisted of showing the pigeons images of two houses - one with and one without smoke coming from its chimney. The birds chose the smoking chimney...first time.
JimB
"Pigeons Show Superior Self-recognition Abilities To Three Year Old Humans
"ScienceDaily (June 14, 2008) — Keio University scientists have shown that pigeons are able to discriminate video images of themselves even with a 5-7 second delay, thus having self-cognitive abilities higher than 3-year-old children who have difficulty recognizing their self-image with only a 2 second delay."
"Prof. Shigeru Watanabe of the Graduate School of Human Relations of Keio University and Tsukuba University graduate student Kohji Toda trained pigeons to discriminate real-time self-image using mirrors as well as videotaped self-image, and proved that pigeons can recognize video images that reflect their movements as self-image."
More at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080613145535.htm
JimB
"Pigeons Show Superior Self-recognition Abilities To Three Year Old Humans
"ScienceDaily (June 14, 2008) — Keio University scientists have shown that pigeons are able to discriminate video images of themselves even with a 5-7 second delay, thus having self-cognitive abilities higher than 3-year-old children who have difficulty recognizing their self-image with only a 2 second delay."
"Prof. Shigeru Watanabe of the Graduate School of Human Relations of Keio University and Tsukuba University graduate student Kohji Toda trained pigeons to discriminate real-time self-image using mirrors as well as videotaped self-image, and proved that pigeons can recognize video images that reflect their movements as self-image."
More at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080613145535.htm