title: Pigeons identify individual humans but show no sign of recognizing them in photographs.
abstract: Photographs, especially of humans, are widely used as stimuli in behavioural research with pigeons. Despite their abundant use, it is not clear to what extent pigeons perceive photographs as representing three-dimensional objects. To address this question, we trained 16 pigeons to identify individual, real-life humans. This discrimination depended primarily on visual cues from the heads of the persons. Subsequently, the pigeons were shown photographs of these individuals to test for transfer to a two-dimensional representation. Successful identification of a three-dimensional person did not facilitate learning of the corresponding photographs. These results demonstrate limitations of cross-recognition of complex objects and their photographs in pigeons.
authors.affiliation: Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. lars.dittrich@rub.de
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dittrich
authors.forename: Ruth
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Adam
authors.forename: Emre
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Unver
authors.forename: Onur
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Güntürkün
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D010856:Columbidae; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D007858:Learning; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010781:Photography; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012938:Social Perception; D014743:Videotape Recording; D014796:Visual Perception