This is Bird Note.

Birds have to be smart to survive, but their minds often work a little differently than ours.

A new study reveals that pigeon brains sometimes operate much like a computer's artificial intelligence.

In the study, researchers had pigeons identify different types of shapes, pecking a button to give their answers.

If they got it right, they received a treat. The pigeon's powerful desire for food helped them fix their mistakes over time.

At the start of the experiment, they averaged just 55% correct, only a smidge better than a wild

guess. But by the end, they were scoring 95%, an impressive result for a bird.

The researchers think these pigeons

aren't learning a general rule

that can apply in other situations.

In other words,

the birds haven't learned their shapes

like a human child might.

They're just using trial and error

so they can choose the response

that gets them food in this one situation.

That's surprisingly similar to how computers learn how to do a task using artificial intelligence.

AI picks up skills without learning general rules,

instead just recognizing patterns to predict an answer.

Clearly, we still have a lot to learn from bird brains.

For Bird Note, I'm Michael Stein.