World Science staff
You can have an eye for art. Or, you can have a bird’s eye view of something.
But both at the same time?
A Japanese researcher is reporting that he has trained pigeons to tell apart “good” and “bad” children’s paintings, in the process making judgments that largely agree with those of human viewers.
Can animals make artistic judgments? A researcher claims to have trained pigeons to tell apart “good” and “bad” children’s paintings
Whether the birds are weighing the works based on artistic merit, or on some other characteristic or cue, may not be fully ascertainable. But somehow, the avians could distinguish between pictures previously rated as good or bad by adults, according to psychologist Shigeru Watanabe of Keio University in Tokyo.
Perhaps pigeons can “learn the concept of ‘beauty’ as defined by humans,” wrote Watanabe in the study, published in the June 16 issue of the research journal Animal Cognition.
Watanabe first asked a group of adults to judge several children’s paintings. Sophisticated evaluations weren’t requested: the viewers were simply asked to rate the works as “good” or “bad”—that is, beautiful or ugly.
Later, pigeons were trained, through dispensation of treats, to peck at “good” paintings. Pecking at “bad” ones would net them no reward.
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