Pigeon intelligence

Available data show[citation needed], for example, that: All these are capacities that are likely to be found in most mammal and bird species.

In addition pigeons have unusual, perhaps unique, abilities to learn routes back to their home from long distances.

[1] In an article from 1995, Watanabe, Sakamoto, and Wakita described an experiment which showed that pigeons can be trained to discriminate between paintings by Picasso and by Monet.

In a later paper, Watanabe showed that if pigeons and human college students undergo the same training, their performance in distinguishing between Van Gogh and Chagall paintings is comparable.

Levenson et al.[2] demonstrated in a 2015 paper that rock dove pigeons (Columba livia), which share many visual system properties with humans, can serve as promising surrogate observers of medical images, a capability not previously documented.