Are humans the only animal that can take account beauty ? Stories aboutpainting elephantsandchimpshave convinced some that we are not the only species with a produce signified of the aesthetic . But doubts stay regarding whether these animals are truly create art or simply prepare performers . A Japanese scientist has approached the inquiry from a different angle by test whether pigeons can learn human esthetics — using children ’s paintings .
Photo byJackie Finn - Irwin
For the study,“Pigeons can discriminate “ good ” and “ bad ” paintings by children,”the researcher trained group of pigeon ( obtained from the Japanese Society for Racing Pigeons , no less ) to approximate pastels and watercolour from an elementary shoal in Tokyo . Why children ’s house painting ? According to the author , even though we may argue about whether a particular great work of art is beautiful or not , people be given to concord on a “ common sense of beauty for rather relatively less sophisticated paintings such as those drawn by schoolchildren . ”
First , 57 paintings were range by the schoolhouse ’s art instructor . The scientist then read the pieces graded as “ A ” and “ C ” or “ 500 ” work and asked 10 adult to classify them as “ good ” or “ bad ” , result in two groups of 15 pictures ( see Figure ) . Ten painting of each type were then put into a Powerpoint presentation and used to train the pigeon . If the birds pick up a headstone after viewing a “ in effect ” picture , they received a food reward ( mmm , birdseed ! ) , but they got no reward if they pecked the Florida key after viewing a “ defective ” picture .
The scientist then set the pigeons loose on the five antecedently unobserved “ good ” and “ speculative ” painting . Lo and behold , the birds were able to correctly classify the new painting , peck after the new “ good ” pic 35 % of the time but after the “ bad ” ones only 15 % of the clock time . The scientist went on to determine which visual remind the pigeons used to tell the “ good ” and “ regretful ” graphics apart ; it turns out the pigeon ’ power collapsed when presented with disastrous and lily-white or highly pixellated versions of the pictures , indicating that the birds were primarily using color and shape to judge the paintings :
The event clearly show that the pigeons acquired the optical conception of the stimulant class that was classified as ‘ good ’ characterisation as subjectively judged by human commentator . This does not intend that the pigeon perceive the pic as ‘ beautiful ’ as we do , but rather suggests that they separate beautiful paintings as one year of stimuli …
As the author carefully points out , although we do n’t eff if the pigeon really like the “ good ” painting , its clear that the pigeon can be civilise to discern them . But who knows — the pigeons may have actually look forward to the “ good ” painting due to the reward that take after close behind . And really , how different is that from people being train by social rewards to have “ upright taste perception ” ?
Lillian Fritz - Laylin and Meredith Carpenter runNCBI ROFL , a web log pay to scientific skulking .
BiologyPigeons
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