Darryl Laiu of the BBC made a nice two-and-a-half-minute video documentary about B.F. Skinner‘s Ig Nobel Peace-Prize-winning pigeon-guided missile project. The BBC describes it: The WWII experiment to make pigeon-guided missiles During WWII, psychologist B F Skinner tried to use pigeons to guide missiles towards enemy ships. His study proved it was possible, and it […]
This video tells part of the history of trained dancing chickens, with emphasis on the role played by psychologist B.F. Skinner (who is pictured below): Modern Farmer offers a more extensive history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner
Pigeons may be as good as some bad radiologists, in some ways, maybe, suggests this new study: “Pigeons (Columba livia) as Trainable Observers of Pathology and Radiology Breast Cancer Images,” Richard M. Levenson, Elizabeth A. Krupinski, Victor M. Navarro, and Edward A. Wasserman, PLoS ONE, 10(11): e0141357. (Thanks to Ig Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Oberzaucher for […]
Technology has moved beyond anything B.F. Skinner had available when he did his imaginative pigeon-behavior experiments. This study tells of the latest advance: “A Kinect-based system for automatic recording of some pigeon behaviors,” Damian M. Lyons , James S. MacDonall, Kelly M. Cunningham, Behavior Research Methods, December 2015, Volume 47, Issue 4, pp 1044-1054. (Thanks to Andrew Caines […]