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Pigeons Can Correct Their Mistakes Like AI
Bird brains may pick up new skills through pattern recognition.
© Mick Thompson
Birds have to be smart to survive — but their minds often work a little differently than ours do. In a new study, researchers trained pigeons to identify different types of shapes, peck a button to give their answers, and receive a treat for the correct response. The pigeons learned to fix their mistakes over time, but not by learning their shapes as a human would. Instead, the researchers found that birds improved by trial-and-error, much in the same way that computers learn how to perform a task using artificial intelligence!
BirdNote®
Pigeons Can Correct Their Mistakes Like AI
Written by Conor Gearin
This is BirdNote.
[Rock Pigeon calls, ML144324561]
Birds have to be smart to survive — but their minds often work a little differently than ours. A new study reveals that pigeon brains sometimes operate much like a computer’s artificial intelligence!
[Rock Pigeon calls, ML144324561]
In the study, researchers had pigeons identify different types of shapes, pecking a button to give their answers. If they got it right, they received a treat.
The pigeons’ powerful desire for food helped them fix their mistakes over time. At the start of the experiment, they averaged just 55% correct, only a smidge better than a wild guess. But by the end, they were scoring 95% — an impressive result for a bird!
The researchers think these pigeons aren’t learning a general rule they can apply in other situations. In other words, the birds haven’t learned their shapes like a human child might. They’re just using trial-and-error so they can choose the response that gets them food in this one situation.
That’s surprisingly similar to how computers learn how to do a task using artificial intelligence. AI picks up skills without learning general rules, instead just recognizing patterns to predict an answer.
[Rock Pigeon calls, ML144324561]
Clearly, we still have a lot to learn from bird brains. For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.
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Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
With thanks to Katie Meyer for this idea
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Rock Pigeon calls ML144324561 recorded by Paul Marvin.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2025 BirdNote January 2025
Narrator: Michael Stein
ID# ROPI-09-2025-01-20 ROPI-09
Reference:
'Dim-witted' pigeons use the same principles as AI to solve tasks
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/10/231025110653.htm
Read the paper: The pigeon as a machine: Complex category structures can be acquired by a simple associative model
https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(23)02075-8
Michael Stein
Narrator
Conor Gearin
WriterSights & Sounds
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