Pigeons, jay birds and baboons are not pigeon-brained

THINK TWICE next time you dismissively shoo a pigeon out of your way. That bird is far brainier than you might imagine. Research presented at the AAAS meeting shows pigeons, but also crows, baboons, monkeys and jay birds have more intelligence than we are perhaps willing to admit.

Studies of all these animals prove they have capabilities that would have remained unknown until tested.

Ahead of the session he will chair tomorrow, University of Iowa psychologist Dr Ed Wasserman said: “What we are really trying to understand is the extent to which cognition is general throughout the animal kingdom.”

A “backbone” measure of intelligence was whether the organism recognised things that are the same and things that are different, he said. Humans do this as a matter of course, but when tested, baboons and pigeons have shown they could do it too.

The same two species could also recognise “relations between relations”, a form of knowing which was the odd one out. Tests by Dr Mike Young of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and others involving Wasserman and Dr Bob Cook of Tufts University confirmed again that baboons and pigeons had the right stuff.

Dr Wasserman described the research as of “broad evolutionary significance”, given many species have such capacities – for example the jay that can plan ahead, monkeys that can do simple arithmetic and crows that can make and then use tools.