Gaby
Art critics of the world, beware: pigeons might just take over your job. This surprising turn of events comes from a respected scientist who taught a flock of these intelligent birds to “understand” art. That was Shigeru Watanabe, an honorary professor of psychology at Keio University in Japan. In 1995 he demonstrated that pigeons could distinguish between the works of Monet and Picasso, and his team later received an Ig Nobel Prize for the study.
Watanabe began to wonder if these birds could go even further. For instance, could they differentiate between good art and bad art? Armed with four pigeons, some birdseed, and a collection of thirty children’s artworks that he had photographed and uploaded to a computer, the professor set out to find answers.
What did he discover? Initially, Watanabe and ten adult observers evaluated watercolor and pastel works created by elementary school students. Fifteen pieces were categorized as “good,” while another fifteen were deemed “bad.” Then came the most intriguing part: training the pigeons. The birds were shown images on a computer screen and rewarded with food if they pecked a button in response to a “good” piece. If they pecked the button after seeing a “bad” artwork, they received no treat.
After an average of 22.5 training sessions, all the pigeons could distinguish between “good” and “bad” art. But did they simply memorize which works belonged to which category? Watanabe suggested they probably hadn’t.
Professor Watanabe continued his experiments, showing the pigeons images they had never seen before. The birds consistently pecked the button in response to “good” works more often than to “bad” ones. The same pattern emerged when they were shown smaller versions of the artworks, IFLScience reported.
Next, Watanabe wanted to know what criteria the pigeons used to make their decisions. He showed them black-and-white and mosaic versions of the paintings. This time, the pigeons were less adept at distinguishing between “good” and “bad” art. That suggests their judgments relied largely on color and shape.
“For a long time, it was believed that evaluating works of art was a skill exclusive to humans, but these experiments have shown that with proper training, pigeons can also differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ paintings,” Watanabe said. However, one question remains unanswered: what criteria did the team of scientists use when they initially assessed the artworks? The researchers did not disclose whether the children’s comments were shared with the pigeons. The findings of this study were published in the journal Animal Cognition.
