The discrimination of natural movement by budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulates) and pigeons (Columba livia).

Abstract

Three experiments examined the ability of birds to discriminate between the actions of walking forwards and backwards as demonstrated by video clips of a human walking a dog. Experiment 1 revealed that budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulates) could discriminate between these actions when the demonstrators moved consistently from left to right. Test trials then revealed that the discrimination transferred, without additional training, to clips of the demonstrators moving from right to left. Experiment 2 replicated the findings from Experiment 1 except that the demonstrators walked as if on a treadmill in the center of the display screen. The results from the first 2 experiments were replicated with pigeons in Experiment 3. The results cannot be explained if it is assumed that animals rely on static cues, such as those derived from individual postures, in order to discriminate between the actions of another animal. Instead, this type of discrimination appears to be controlled by dynamic cues derived from changes in the posture of the demonstrators.

Velocity-based motion categorization by pigeons.

“…Of course, the latter introduces spatial complexities into the discrimination. As discussed by Koban and Cook (2009), one nice property of a rotation discriminations is that they eliminate such spatial confounds when dealing with motion (see also, Mui et al, 2007).…”

Determining When Birds Perceive Correspondence Between Pictures and Objects: A Critique.

“…We have no evidence about whether or not the birds saw any kind of animal moving in Mui et al's (2007) video. Without evidence of correspondence in birds' eyes between the video and actual live humans and dogs, Mui et al (2007) should have resisted the temptation to anthropomorphize about their study, and the editor and reviewers should have found this obvious error. Of course without the tantalizing reference to natural movement, the study becomes much less interesting: all the more reason to work to avoid this anthropomorphic error.…”

“…Yet, we must warn readers to be alert to anthropomorphic errors in what might otherwise be useful research on basic processes. In a study of motion perception, Mui, Haselgrove, McGregor, Futter, Heyes, & Pearce (2007) successfully trained budgerigars and pigeons to discriminate video of a woman walking a dog either forwards or backwards in the same direction. Mue et al (2007) labeled their study one of discrimination of natural movement and discussed the work in terms of the ability of one animal to detection the movement of another.…”

What's social about social learning?

“…Further evidence that input mechanisms can be specialized ontogenetically rather than phylogenetically comes from studies showing that monkeys (Klein, Deaner, & Platt, 2008), rats (Miller & Dollard,1941;Galef, 1981), budgerigars (Mui et al, 2007) honeybees (Dyer, Neumeyer, & Chittka, 2005), and humans (Behrens, Hunt, Woolrich, & Rushworth, 2008) become more attentive to social stimuli as a consequence of experience in which these stimuli provide reliable information about the availability and location of resources. The last of these studies is particularly interesting.…”