As part of a university study, a school art teacher and 10 other adults classified pupils watercolour and pastel paintings as either "good" or "bad", depending on whether the images were clear and viewers could see the specific characteristics of the subjects in the paintings. Pigeons from a racing society were placed in a chamber where they could see a computer monitor displaying the children's art.
In the first series of experiments, four pigeons were trained to recognise "good" paintings by being rewarded with food if they pecked at the "good" pictures. Pecking at "bad" pictures was not rewarded. They were then presented with a mixture of new and old "good" and "bad" paintings and the researchers noted which paintings they pecked at. Pigeons consistently pecked at the "good" paintings more often than at the "bad" paintings.
When the paintings' sizes were reduced, the birds discriminated just as well between the two types of paintings. However, when they were presented with monochrome paintings, they were no longer able to distinguish between the paintings, indicating that they use colour to discriminate. When the paintings were processed into mosaics, the pigeons also found it difficult to distinguish between the paintings, showing that they also use patterns to make their beauty judgments. Hiding part of the picture did not affect the pigeons' ability to tell the difference between paintings.
In the second series of experiments, researchers looked at whether pigeons could discriminate between watercolour and pastel paintings. Eight new pigeons were trained to recognise the texture of paintings - four were trained to peck at watercolour paintings and four were trained to peck at pastel paintings. As in the previous experiment, when presented with a mixture of new and old paintings, pigeons used both colour and shape cues to accurately discriminate between textures. Taken together, these experiments suggest that humans and pigeons use similar visual cues to identify "good" paintings and painting texture.
Although there is a considerable difference in humans' and pigeons' brain architectures, they can function in similar ways to make complex visual discriminations. Professor Shigeru Watanabe, from Keio University in Japan, said his work showed pigeons judge beauty in a similar way to humans. He said: "Artistic endeavours have been long thought to be limited to humans, but this experiment shows that, with training, pigeons are capable of distinguishing between 'good' and 'bad' paintings. This research does not deal with advanced artistic judgments, but it shows that pigeons are able to acquire the ability to judge beauty similar to that of humans."
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