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Pigeons have been show to employ abstract numerical rules as well as monkeys. - Source: William van der Vliet
Otago researchers have caused a splash by showing that pigeons have abstract mathematical reasoning, previously only believed to be possessed by primates.
Damian Scarf, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Otago, has published a study along with two colleagues in the US magazine Science.
While all animals can count, Scarf used pigeons in an experiment first used for rhesus monkeys in the 1990s.
Scarf reported that the pigeons did just as well as the monkeys, saying in the abstract that while only primates are thought to share our ability to employ abstract numerical rules, they show that "this ability is present in pigeons and that their performance is indistinguishable from that displayed by monkeys".
Scarf says pigeons aren't the bright sparks of the bird world, and that research will now spread to other birds, including keas.
