Birds Can Recognize People's Faces and Know Their Voices
Date: 28.6.2012
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.
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.
In a separate study, published in the journal Animal Cognition, the crows responded significantly more often to unfamiliar than familiar human voices and, conversely, responded more to familiar than unfamiliar jackdaw calls. According to the research team, the results provide the first evidence that birds can discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar heterospecific individuals using auditory stimuli.
