As it turned out, the pigeons are able to read.
Scientists from the University of Otago in New Zealand first proved that pigeons are able to distinguish the written word.
Their study was published in the journal PNAS.
Pigeons are able to demonstrate when reading characters “spelling” ability, previously observed in baboons. In the experiment, pigeons were trained to touch the beak of the letter of the four English letters when they appear on the screen or to hit a special symbol, if on the screen there was a set of four letters not forming a word – for example, the URSP.
Gradually adding words, scientists have forced the pigeons to learn to 58 words – so many could learn dove Q35, the other poultry learned, on average, 43 words.
“The reaction of pigeons to known words and words with rearranged letters shows that they are extremely sensitive to the relative positions of the letters in the word,” said the scientists. “Pigeons, which people separated by 300 million years of evolution, has a completely different architecture of the brain, show a stunning ability in processing the spelling,” the co-author Onur Gunturkun.
