title: Domestic pigeons (Columba livia) discriminate between photographs of male and female pigeons.
abstract: We investigated whether pigeons are able to discriminate color photographs of male and female pigeons, using a categorical discrimination procedure. In Experiments 1 and 2B, 10 out of 14 pigeons learned the discrimination. Of these, 5 pigeons showed transfer to novel stimuli, demonstrating the categorical nature of the trained discrimination. Experiment 3 showed that the discriminative behavior was based primarily on the body, as opposed to the head and the neck region. In 1 out of 3 pigeons, the discriminative behavior was maintained by the black-and-white photographs. The results suggest that some pigeons have the ability to discriminate the sex of conspecifics without behavioral cues.
authors.affiliation: University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. tamo_nakamura@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Tamo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nakamura
authors.forename: Masato
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ito
authors.forename: David B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Croft
authors.forename: R Frederick
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Westbrook
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D010856:Columbidae; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception