(Above) Beauty was in the eye of the treat holder when pigeons picked quality paintings in exchange for food. Picture courtesy English Heritage
Beady-eyed pigeons can discern a duff drawing from an aesthetic masterpiece, according to newly-published research by a leading expert.
Japanese bird boffin Shigeru Watanabe, a Professor from Keio University who has published tomes on topics including food storage in scrub jays, how pigeons watch themselves on film and avian social perception, reckons his favourite species can spot pleasing colours and patterns.
His claims come after a string of tests in which the birds were rewarded for pecking the more beautiful examples in a line-up of artistic efforts.
The range of watercolour and pastel paintings by Tokyo schoolchildren, scored "good" or "bad" by teachers and 10 other adults, were presented to pigeons from the Japanese Society for Racing Pigeons on a computer monitor in a chamber.
The plumed panel repeatedly picked the finer exhibits on display, earning tasty treats in return for proving their eye for quality. Even hiding parts of the pictures and reducing their size didn't fool the cooing critics, who were only stumped when the paintings became greyscale or mosaic, indicating their reliance on colour cues and patterns.
"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," concluded the findings, which will form part of an Animal Cognition journal.
"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."
