Pest? Nuisance? Dirty? Diseased? Rats with wings? Dumb?
A lot of people think so. In fact they’d like to get rid of them. Some have tried. Didn’t work.
It is hard to argue with some of those things.
But pigeons do have a fan base. A big one. (And you thought Bert was the only one.) If you ask them they may concede some of those faults, but there’s one they’ll get downright cranky about. So let me give you some advice. And no joke here. Never, ever tell one of them pigeons are dumb. Because between invectives they will be happy to set you straight.
And they may have a point. As birds go (in fact as animals go) scientists are finding they are pretty smart. They’re capable of distinguishing between cubism and impressionist paintings. (Although even I can do that.) They can also distinguish between several people in photos. They can judge good children’s art from bad. They have a good grasp of numbers, like arranging things in numerical order, usually seen only in higher primates. And—I know this is hard to believe but-- they’ve been found to make better stock picking decisions than humans. Not making it up. And I don’t mean random pecking. Pigeon Stock Picks
They’re able to remember hundreds of images for several years. They can recognize all the letters in the alphabet and, scientists believe, they conceptualize. The list goes on and on. Anyway. You get the point.
And that doesn’t count their amazing homing instinct. Sometimes they find their way back by following roads. Exactly. Turn-by-turn. Heck. Even Siri can’t always do that.
Maybe I’m getting carried away. But remember. This is not me talking. This is science. I realize that homing does not technically fit our definition of intelligence. But then what is intelligence? When it comes to animals our traditional definitions are coming under heavy fire. Edwin Boring, a big shot Harvard Psychologist says basically, “Intelligence is what is measured by intelligence tests.”
So here’s an experiment: take a human, put him in a box, close his sense of smell, hearing, and electromagnetism (if he has one). Spin him around three times. Put him in an airplane and take him halfway around the world to Madagascar or someplace. Dump him out and say, “See ya.”
Aren't you glad that wasn’t on the SAT? : )
And finally. pigeons are one of the few animals (most others are primates) that can pass the mirror test. You know. When they recognize themselves in a mirror and are aware it’s them. Scientists equate that with intelligence and self-awareness. However it took them a long time to discover pigeons could do this. They just didn’t have a good way to test them.
I don’t know how they ended up doing it, but they always could have asked me. Of course.
They should have used courting pairs.Then when they put them in front of the mirror it would have been obvious. Males would have flexed their wings in profile, while females checked their tail feathers. :)
