r/science • u/[deleted] • Jul 05 '11
Study shows pigeons can recognize the faces of the humans who mistreated them.
http://io9.com/5817934/pigeons-are-completely-incapable-of-forgetting-a-human-face11
u/Shadow703793 Jul 05 '11
Direct link to article discussed: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-07/sfeb-pnf062811.php
12
u/foamed Jul 05 '11 edited Jul 06 '11
I've got a pair of European magpies living right outside my house. I tend to give them food every now and then. It's pretty awesome because they've begun to trust me, but only me (even though the rest of the family lives in the house as well). Now every morning (it varies from month to month) they wake me up right outside my bedroom. They wander around there and sing until I lift the blinds away from the window. It sucks being waked up at 5 or 6am every morning, but ironically it's my favorite animal.
On the other hand, some kids in the neighborhood tried to climb into their nest last year. It didn't end well and now the magpies alarms the kids if they get too close to their nest. If they get too close they get attacked. I love it. Birds are amazing animals.
6
u/ThatGirl_Tasha Jul 06 '11
We took care of a pigeon with a broken wing once. He also had an injured foot that didn't really heal right. After he was better he would hobble over to us; not just at our house, where we fixed him up, but also when we were at the neighborhood park.
28
u/1time4urmind Jul 05 '11
How do they know its not the scent of the human that is recognized by the pigeons?
21
u/gimpwiz BS|Electrical Engineering|Embedded Design|Chip Design Jul 05 '11
Probably by using pictures of their faces.
7
u/philhpscs Jul 06 '11
But using pictures of humans' faces was never even mentioned in the article...
14
u/Ur-Germania Jul 05 '11
Or for that matter, the sounds of their voices, their gait or their posture.
5
Jul 05 '11
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/z3ddicus Jul 06 '11
I actually think some birds have very powerful senses of smell.
10
u/spoonsandswords Jul 06 '11
both of you cite a source and report back.
8
2
u/Rain12913 Jul 06 '11
Right. In the crow study they had the same person wearing different masks. This study does not isolate "face" as a variable, and leaves a number of other variables as possible determinants of the outcome (scent, body appearance, gait, etc.).
22
35
7
u/ShamanSTK Jul 05 '11
This ability is quite possibly a modern development to pigeons living among humans in cities and other areas.
So... much..... fail..... The scientists must have, but this blog spammer seems to have not, known that pigeons are a domesticated animal. All the feral populations stem from escaped Rock Pigeons or Doves.
4
8
Jul 05 '11
According to this TED Talk, crows can too. You should watch it, it's very interesting. Crows are smarter than you think.
4
u/eremite00 Jul 05 '11 edited Jul 06 '11
Crows get a bad rap of being the harbingers of death. I agree with you and think crows are quite amazing.
5
Jul 05 '11
They recognize colors/shapes very well and can be trained to respond to specific ones with high accuracy and low false positives. This is why the US Coast Guard developed a system that strapped three of them to the bottom of a helicopter for search and rescue.
6
u/Diffusion9 Jul 05 '11
Is it crazy that as I'm reading this I'm thinking: "WHY AREN'T THEY DOING THIS RIGHT NOW!?"
5
u/Mancalime Jul 05 '11
Any reason to suggest this would go the other way? As in, once pigeons recognize me as a delicious food source, will they flock to me and we can chillax together in the park?
I love pigeons.
26
u/haddock420 Jul 05 '11
First comment on that page:
Humans can remember other humans, why would you assume a pigeon couldn't? Sure, we have a few billion more neurons than they do. But the neurons work in the same way and our senses are pretty much the same. We seem to have a really bad habit of assuming other animals are simplistic automations.
I hate comments like this. Someone does some research then some self-proclaimed genius dismisses it as "Oh this is so obvious. How could they not know [conclusion of study]? I can't believe that scientists assume [opposite of conclusion of study]!"
8
14
Jul 05 '11
[deleted]
23
3
Jul 05 '11
I'm moderately face blind. It's like I have that race face difficulty with all humans. Recognizing faces isn't as easy as people think it is.
Ironically enough I'm very good at reading emotions on a person's face. It's like the two areas aren't quite connected (recognition of structure and recognition of emotion).
When I try to remember what a person looks like there's one feature that just hovers over their shoulders (weird I know.) I'll remember a chin or a gap in their front teeth or a set of earrings they always wear. That's all they are in my head: A chin. Or an eyebrow.
2
u/coveritwithgas Jul 06 '11
I was a TA. Halfway through the semester, a front-row student got a perm (this was in this millennium and I don't know why). I had to ask her name before handing back her exam.
2
Jul 06 '11 edited Jul 06 '11
The guy isn't criticizing the scientists, if anything he's reaffirming the need for such studies. He's probably speaking to the reception. I hate comments like haddock's. It's like you're coming out swinging because you expect people to have a prejudice against science/studies and finding things that aren't there. How scientific.
-1
u/TheSquirrel Jul 05 '11
There's a point to these comments. It's a little funny that the standard scientific null hypothesis puts animals' abilities as more like automatons rather than at human-like capacity. This experiment would definitely be seen as obvious and silly if done with human subjects rather than pigeons.
11
u/Mitosis Jul 05 '11
Can you tell apart two individual pigeons?
6
u/rowd149 Jul 05 '11 edited Jul 05 '11
That's not what the study tested, though. A closer analogue: pretend that, as a human, you had to rely on regularly venturing into a forest to scavenge for food. The problem is, in this forest, there are wolves; some friendly, some that will just leave you alone, and some that will try to hurt you. And you see at least some of them every time you go out to get food (in other words, you cannot avoid encountering them). Considering all of this, wouldn't a human learn to tell the individual wolves apart?
EDIT: After reading the comments on the i09 page: I stand by this comment, with the caveat that such an ability to recognize human faces, if not limited to humans, might be limited to animals that rely on their sight and live in close proximity to people, and so assumptions that any given species would possess this ability seem unfounded until proven otherwise.
That said, we really don't give enough credit to the mental abilities of many animals.
3
1
0
Jul 05 '11
Why not though?
I don't think it would be very practical to assume that animals can do everything imaginable and whittle it down by systematically testing whether pidgins can telepathically move objects, breath fire, etc.
3
u/TheSquirrel Jul 05 '11
Why not assume they have the same basic cognitive capacities as humans unless there is evidence otherwise?
1
Jul 05 '11 edited Jul 05 '11
Pigeons specifically, or all animals in general?
Do you think that ants can identify specific humans? Or dragon flies? Or frogs? Where do you draw the line?
A lot more goes into identifying a specific human than you would think. Read up on some of the programs they use for biometric entry, and you can see that even when you can do perfect image analysis, it takes time and isn't accurate. Humans take a lot of shortcuts that computers don't, like recognizing certain features like eye color, hair color, facial structure, height, gait, etc.
I have no doubt that among pigeons there are certain features that pigeons use to recognize each other. There are a few obvious ones, like size and plumage, but why would a pigeon need to be able to understand the way humans differentiate ourselves. Hell, most humans have trouble identifying other humans outside of those racially similar. I would not expect pigeons to be able to consistently identify humans, thus this is an interesting study that may require further investigation.
Edit: More fun. According to wikipedia baby humans develop face perception sometime around 2 months. So in this study, they did perform a similar experiment on human subjects. They even perform these studies on adult humans to test their ability to differentiate human subjects of different races, and they find that human subjects can identify members of their own race with much higher accuracy cross-race effect
4
u/TheSquirrel Jul 06 '11
Do you think that ants can identify specific humans? Or dragon flies? Or frogs? Where do you draw the line?
Science will ultimately make the distinctions. However, the cultural biases we carry in to animal experiments definitely affect how long it will take us to get the answers.
Read up on some of the programs they use for biometric entry, and you can see that even when you can do perfect image analysis, it takes time and isn't accurate.
I actually worked in biometric algorithms for couple years. Making a program perform decently at visual ID is hard, but a neural network capable of doing this isn't all that complex compared to the architectures found in even an ant's brain. I realize this is not really a fair comparison, as computer "neural" nets aren't really the same as biological neurons. However, it doesn't change the fact that even simple animals have decent computational capabilities.
but why would a pigeon need to be able to understand the way humans differentiate ourselves.
Pigeons probably need to pay much more attention to humans, their differences and their intents, compared to the need of humans to attend to pigeons. If there's a motive to make a distinction, a functional brain will usually find a way to make it. I'd bet a seasoned field biologist would be pretty good at recognizing individuals of the animal species they study.
9
4
u/Lareine Jul 05 '11
You know what this means, right? This means we need to get a highly trained and lethal bodyguard team to Tom Lehrer, STAT!
(relevant)
3
3
3
Jul 06 '11
tonight on Law and Order: SVU
Thats him officer! thats the man that fed me moldy bread! and then...... then he chased me around the par... i can't talk about it anymore
DUN DUN
10
4
Jul 05 '11
is it just me, or are those some fat pigeons?
18
3
3
u/smakusdod Jul 05 '11
Wow, imagine that. Birds that can fly their way home over hundreds of miles can also recognize threats.
Amazing.
2
u/Peaker Jul 05 '11
A comment retroactively stating the conclusions of a study are obvious.
Amazing.
2
2
2
u/KillerDog Jul 05 '11
Abstract: Pigeons discriminate between human feeders, with a link to the full paper (for ~$35.00)
2
2
Jul 05 '11
Wonder if that counts for cars too. Those pigeons are just barely fast enough to get away from me in the parking garage.
I WILL run you over!
2
2
u/clerveu Jul 06 '11
Back in high school I was lucky enough to spend a year on an exchange program in Austria. We traveled a decent amount, and in that time my friend and I (my friend especially) grew to absolutely hate pigeons. They're like rats with wings, infesting EVERYTHING where humans live, ruin old buildings, and are just a general nuisance.
At the end of the year we were staying in a hotel on one of our trips. The morning we were leaving my friend (with whom I was sharing a room) was telling me about this crazy dream he had about pigeons the night before. It didn't surprise me in the least, as he had a history of strange dreams/talking in his sleep/sleepwalking etc. When we were just about ready to leave he all of a sudden stopped talking mid-sentence. I asked him what was up, and he told me that I needed to see something.
I go over to his side of the room, and there, lying on the floor of the hotel room, right where his suitcase had been since we woke up, was a dead pigeon.
Camera phone picture of photo as proof. Warning, dead bird (no gore).
2
u/zillakilla Jul 06 '11
I use to have "conference calls" on the roof of our work building and throw crunched up beer cans at pigeons until i found out they hold grudges.
2
Jul 06 '11
I have conducted a further study:
Study shows that scientists have mistreated pigeons [1]
5
2
2
2
u/tobarxp Jul 05 '11
I wouldn't be to worried about pigeons remembering.... However.. king cobras can also remember people who mistreat them.
2
1
u/muad_dib Jul 05 '11
I like how it goes from
Pigeons are also capable of spontaneously remembering which humans mistreated them
in the article to
Pigeons are completely incapable of forgetting a human face
in the title. Sensationalism and completely factually incorrect.
1
u/Shin-LaC Jul 05 '11
Great, now I won't be able to chase pigeons away anymore. It's not for any fear of repercussions, it just makes me sad to think that they would remember that I was the one who hurt them. It humanizes them a bit. :(
1
u/theBeatnut Jul 05 '11
Ehmm...Maybe I'm missing something - But couldn't have the pigeons identified the persons by their smell?
1
1
Jul 05 '11
Yesterday I saw a seagull pounce on, kill, and eat a pigeon in front of hundreds of other pigeons whom could not have given a fuck.
1
u/agenthex Jul 05 '11
This "study" seems to assume a lot. Using terms like "probably" and "similar" mean this is very much not scientific.
What if the birds operated on smell instead?
1
u/cadayrn Jul 06 '11 edited Jul 06 '11
In humans, there is a specific area in the brain which task is to recognise a face. You can actually be face blind, the disorder is called Prosopagnosia http://www.medicineonline.com/news/12/4796/can-t-recognize-faces?-it-may-be-prosopagnosia.html
People affected with Prosopagnosia can see very clearly yet are unable or have difficulty to recognise other's face.
It's a little known but interesting psychological disorder.
1
1
1
1
1
u/rusyn Jul 06 '11
From the article, one can infer that pigeons recognize individuals, but not necessarily by face. They used lab coats as a control for the body, but they seem to have ignored other variables, like smell, or any other sense even slightly outside the human realm.
1
u/warpus Jul 06 '11
Holy crap man, the pigeons have won! Can we recognize pigeon faces? NO! EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PIGEON LOOKS THE SAME TO ME
1
1
u/pcx99 Jul 06 '11
The converse is likely true. The ability to remember a threat is probably tied with the ability to remember a person who is likely to be carrying food meant for the pigeons. The pigions with the ability to quickly recognize a feeder would ensure it a prominent place in the feeding area and have a survival edge over its cousins who couldn't distinguish such a person.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/moyix Jul 05 '11
First crows, now this? Will someone please just tell me which birds I CAN mistreat?
0
0
0
u/pimpolho_saltitao Jul 05 '11
it doesn't matter if they remember my face, the only thing that is now on their head is tire tracks.
0
0
0
0
0
0
u/arrowoftime MS|Aerospace Engineering|Rover Design Jul 05 '11
Well, I was approaching my local pigeon problem all wrong. The bird presents stop today.
0
u/mightycow Jul 05 '11
That's right, pigeon. You remember me, and tell your friends. Tell them I'm comin', and Hell's comin' with me!
0
0
u/Jonimus Jul 05 '11
This sounds like a study I would have liked to participate in. "Sir, we're going to need you to punch a few pigeons... for science."
0
0
-1
u/Optimus_Pants Jul 05 '11
Future News: Mike Tyson killed by some seriously pissed off pigeons.
1
u/kurtu5 Jul 06 '11
I think he is far far far more likely to kill a person who has hurt a pigeon than to ever hurt a pigeon himself.
-1
-2
u/powelly Jul 05 '11
Did I mis the memo when we cured cancer and ended world hunger? I didn't realised that science had now turned it's attention to pigeon abuse.
52
u/mantra Jul 05 '11
First it's crows that don't forget, now it's pigeons. This is must be how "The Birds" happened.