Tuesday, 26 June 2012
Birds Can Recognize People's Faces and Know Their Voices
ScienceDaily (June 22, 2012) — New research suggests that some birds may know who their human friends are, as they are able to recognize people's faces and differentiate between human voices.
Being able to identify a friend or potential foe could be key to the bird's ability to survive.
Animal behaviour experts from the University of Lincoln in the UK and the University of Vienna worked with pigeons and crows in two separate studies.
Research published in Avian Biology Research shows that pigeons can reliably discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar humans, and that they use facial features to tell people apart.
The team trained a group of pigeons to recognise the difference between photographs of familiar and unfamiliar objects. These pigeons, along with a control group, were then shown photographs of pairs of human faces. One face was of a person familiar to the birds whilst the other was of someone they had not seen before.
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