Not only crows are clever ... pigeons could recognize human faces | Science | Offensive Squid | Forum for the squidlings of author Peter Watts

Not only crows are clever … pigeons could recognize human faces

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12:33 pm
July 5, 2011

Andrea_A

Germany

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French scientists experimented with wild urban pigeons: They remembered the person scaring them away from food, even after changing clothes:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/re…..132527.htm

In 2001, a Japanese scientist wrote a paper about trained pigeons discriminating between paintings by Van Gogh and Chagall:

http://www.springerlink.com/co…..9h4kevxj6/

9:36 am
July 8, 2011

sheila

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I was surprised that pigeons were good at recognizing faces, though I guess I shouldn't have been. That skill is pretty important.

2:06 pm
July 8, 2011

Andrea_A

Germany

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sheila said:

I was surprised that pigeons were good at recognizing faces, though I guess I shouldn't have been. That skill is pretty important.

It is definitively important to know friend or foe, for not getting decoyed and ending up in a frying pan …

Commensal species lseem to undergo co-evolution with humans.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi…..468306.stm

It would be also interesting to have a look at rats ("Giant Killer" is one of my everlasting story favourites). They developed resistance against poison [1], but the question is: are their populations smarter than those not being persecuted (on a sub-antarctic island, e.g.)?

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/s…..5274900021

2:57 pm
July 8, 2011

sheila

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Post edited 2:58 pm – July 8, 2011 by sheila

btw, I was wondering what kind of colors and patterns the lab coats had, and whether pigeons would be paying attention to the differences. Most of the pigeons I see are shades of gray or patterned with white and black. Some of them have iridescence around the neck.

So that has me wondering how they perceive color. I haven't read the link I found yet. (some old-timey looking web page http://users.mis.net/~pthrush/…..g/cvb.html supposedly an excerpt from a book)

update: I forgot to complete my thought. So, if they pay attention to colorings like they have, then it seems like the lab coats should have different barrings or speckles or whatever like pigeons have. Or I guess that is a bogus idea, since predators of pigeons don't have the same colorings as pigeons.

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