School of frenzied probability guys who have mannered adult dog a line was displayed, the longer length the pigeon judged it to be. The reverse was true too: If the pigeons encountered a longer line, they thought it existed time for a greater duration. Pigeons, the scientists concluded, understand the concepts of both time and space; the researchers noted similar results have been found with humans and other primates. It's thought that humans process those concepts with a region called the parietal cortex; pigeon brains lack that cortex, they must have a different way of judging space and time. 4. THEY CAN FIND THEIR WAY BACK TO THE NEST FROM 1300 MILES AWAY. The birds can do this even if they've been transported isolation -with no visual, olfactory, or magnetic clues-while scientists rotate their cages they 't know what direction they're traveling How they do this is a mystery, but people have been exploiting the pigeon's navigational skills since at least 3000 BCE, when ancient peoples would set caged pigeons free and follow them to nearby land. Their navigational skills also make pigeons great -distance messengers. Sports fans ancient Greece are said to have used trained pigeons to the results of the Ancient Olympics. Further east, Genghis Khan stayed touch with his allies and enemies alike through a pigeon-based postal network. 5. THEY SAVED THOUSANDS OF HUMAN LIVES DURING WORLD WARS I AND II. Pigeons' homing talents continued to shape history during the 20th century. both World Wars, rival nations had huge flocks of pigeon messengers. By delivering critical updates, the avians saved thousands of human lives. One racing bird named completed a mission that led to the rescue of 194 stranded U.S. soldiers on October 4. 6. TWO PIGEONS ALMOST DISTRACTED FROM THE DISCOVERY OF EVIDENCE OF THE BIG BANG. 1964, scientists Holmdel, New Jersey, heard hissing noises from their antenna that would later prove to be signals from the Big Bang. But when they first heard the sound, they thought it might be, among other things, the poop of two pigeons that were living the antenna. We took the pigeons, put them a box, and mailed them as far away as we could the company mail to a who fancied pigeons, one of the scientists later recalled. He looked at them and said these are junk pigeons and let them go and before they were right back. But the scientists were able to clean out the antenna and determine that they had not been the cause of the noise. The trap used to catch the birds is on view at the Smithsonian Air Space Museum. 7. YOU CAN TRAIN THEM TO BE SNOBS Japanese psychologist Shigeru Watanabe and two colleagues earned Ig Nobel Prize 1995 for training pigeons, a lab setting, to recognize the paintings of and Pablo Picasso and to distinguish between the painters. The pigeons were even able to use their knowledge of impressionism and cubism to identify paintings of other artists those movements. Later, Watanabe taught other pigeons to distinguish watercolor images from pastels. And a 2009 experiment, captive pigeons he'd borrowed were shown almost two dozen paintings made by students at a Tokyo elementary school, and were taught which ones were considered good and which ones were considered bad. He then presented them with 10 new paintings and the avian critics managed to correctly guess which ones had earned bad grades from the school's teacher and a panel of adults. Watanabe's findings indicate that wild pigeons naturally categorize things on the basis of color, texture, and general appearance. 8. AND TO DISTINGUISH WRITTEN WORDS. a 2016 study, scientists showed that pigeons can differentiate between strings of letters and actual words. Four of the birds built up a vocabulary of between 26 and 58 written English words, and though the birds couldn't actually read them, they identify visual patterns and therefore tell them apart. The birds could even identify words they hadn't seen