2020-09-13, 01:19 AM
Pigeons are smart enough to perceive abstract concepts like time and space
Ephrat Livni
Ephrat Livni
Quote:Research on rhesus monkeys shows they respond like humans to such tests, suggesting the psychological interdependence of space and time isn’t uniquely human. But monkeys and humans, both primates, share key neural structures like a cerebral cortex.
Pigeons don’t have the same cognitive mechanisms yet they respond similarly to space and time tests. They even seem to experience the same conceptual interdependence as monkeys and humans, says cognitive psychologist Edward Wasserman, the lead author on the study. His team found that pigeons, like people, perceived a connection between the length of the lines and passage of time. “Remarkably, pigeons behaved just as did humans and monkeys,” Wasserman says.
“This surprising interdependence violates the belief that—at least psychologically—space and time are independent dimensions,” Wasserman says.
People’s higher-level thinking—musing about philosophy, say, and understanding abstractions like space and time—happens in the parietal cortex, which is part of the cerebral cortex. But pigeons don’t have a parietal cortex, so they’re processing these concepts somewhere else, the psychologist explains.