Listener Questions: Can Pigeons Tell Time?

I answer your questions, from pigeons telling time, to whether cats can taste sugar or not! And in the middle I try to discuss yard maintenance, how to have a wild yard without gosh dern rats! 

If you have an evolutionary biology or animal related question you'd like answered, you can email me at [e-mail]

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Creature Future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show, it's a listener Questions episode.
I answer all of your evolutionary biology, animal, pet, bird,
and space and time questions, and I answer emails that

(00:30):
are sent to Creature Feature Product gmail dot com. By
the way, if you have a question you would like
me to answer, so let's get right into these emails
of amazing questions about animals. So this email is called
bird clocks Questions. Hi, Katie, I wanted to ask about

(00:51):
bird's ability to tell time. A couple of years ago,
I had a job that had be on the same
bench every day, and I began to put out peanuts
every half hour so the pigeons would come and enact
their complex dramatic in her personal lives in front of
me for free entertainment. Wise choice highly suggest doing this.
After a series of events that I won't get into

(01:12):
for fear of this email being too long, one of
the pigeons was shunned from the friend group and started
showing up to my bench a little before the half
hour mark to try and get some peanuts before anyone
else showed up. He was coming before any of the
clock towers rang, which was the indication I was using
for the half hour mark. Is it more likely that

(01:34):
there was some other half hourly indication of time this
pigeon was using, or that this pigeon was simply better
at telling time than I was. Thanks, Miriam, Hi, Miriam.
So this is a great question. Can birds tell time?
And if so, how where do they wear their little wristwatch?
Do they even have risks? All right, first let's start

(01:55):
with let's focus on pigeons, because that is the bird
you're asking a out. So pigeons seem like relatively simple birds,
maybe not the smartest birds out there. Right. They like
our garbage, they like handouts, and they like our cities.
They don't have the sophisticated problem solving intelligent of crows

(02:15):
or the social intelligence of parrots. So it might be
surprising to find that pigeons are relatively complex in their
ability to reason, particularly temporal and spatial reasoning. So there
have been studies on pigeons, fortunately in regards to their
ability to navigate time and space. So a University of

(02:39):
Iowa study called quote non cortical magnitude. Coding of space
and time by pigeons looked into how pigeons processed spatial
and temporal information. So in humans and in other mammals,
time and space are mainly processed in the parietal cortex,

(03:00):
an area of the brain sort of towards the back
of your head. You know, if you've ever worn a bun,
if you've ever done ballet or just worn a bun,
it's kind of under that area. So the problem is
pigeons don't have a parietal cortex, and that leads to
a question can they understand time and space? So pigeons

(03:20):
were allowed to play a sort of pigeony computer game
in this study, so they were shown short or long lines,
like it just a line on a computer screen, and
the length differed both in geometric length like a short
line versus a long line, and the time that the

(03:40):
line was shown on screen, so a line that was
displayed on the screen for a longer period of time
versus a shorter period of time. So after the line
was shown, the pigeons were presented with two buttons symbolizing
short or long, so they were kind of trained. One
of the buttons represented short, and one of the buttons

(04:02):
represented long, and they were awarded when they got it right,
and then they were given a novel set of questions
for the study. So essentially they had to press the
right answer either short in length or short in time
length for these lines, and they were rewarded with a

(04:24):
little treeo if they got things right, So they were
highly motivated pigeons. The researchers found a few things. First,
that pigeons can indeed make a pretty good judgment about
geometric length and of time length. Secondly, like humans and primates,
they get messed up when you say, have a long

(04:44):
line shown on screen for a short amount of time,
and then you ask them to give an answer about
how long is this in geometric length and how long
is this in temporal length. So mismatching like a long
a physically long line short period of time, or short
line for a long period of time kind of messes
them up. But that's not because they're necessarily stupid. It

(05:05):
also messes up us up and other mammals up. So pigeons,
like humans and primates and mammals, may process geometric space
and time space similarly, maybe using similar structures in the brain.
So this does show pigeons can judge duration, and they

(05:29):
can also judge geometric length. But how does it know
what time to go and say, seek out your peanut
offerings cleverly ahead of the other pigeons with whom I
guess this pigeon had a dramatic falling out with the
pigeon group. I'd love to be in on this pigeon
group chat. But regardless, pigeons can seem to tell time

(05:54):
throughout the day, and they likely ascertain time with both
an internal clock and external visual cues from the positioning
of the sun. So fortunately, there was an actual study
done in two thousand and six investigating your specific pigeon problem.
There's a study called representing the Richness of Avian spatial

(06:15):
cognition properties of lateralized homing Pigeon Hippocampus. It's a long
study name, but they were looking at pigeon brains how
they cope with spatial temporal recognition. So the pigeons were
familiarized with an outdoor arena or an indoor lab arena,

(06:35):
and the indoor lab had an artificial sun, so the
researchers would lay out seed only at certain times of day,
and the birds were able to learn when and where
the food was, so when experimenters messed with the bird's
circadian rhythm, like by having their day night cycles messed up,

(06:57):
the birds kept making spatial airs when it came to
finding the food, and when the researchers made a lesion
in the bird's hippocampus, they were never they were no
longer able to use the position of the sun to
find the food. So most likely what Miriam's pigeon is

(07:17):
doing to get to these peanuts before the rest of
the crowd is that they this pigeon is using its
own internal circadian rhythm modulated by hormones, as well as
external cues such as the position of the sun to
find your peanuts and time and space to be at
the correct exact location temporally and spatially so that it

(07:41):
will receive a peanut. Because this is what pigeons are
capable of once you motivate them. I'd be really curious
to hear if your pigeon runs a little earlier late,
depending on the weather, say it's like really overcast all day,
maybe it doesn't have the sun to guide it as much.
I wonder if that would cause little mistakes. It still
has that internal circadian rhythm, so it could probably still

(08:04):
make a reasonable guess as to what time it is,
but maybe it's precision would be off a little bit.
Curious to hear about that, but yeah, thank you so much,
Miriam for your email for being a friend to this outcast,
highly intelligent pigeon. Okay, so this email is called yard maintenance?

(08:31):
Is a bug loving hippie? Hi? I live alone for
the first time in the middle of nowhere in the country. Repeatedly,
me and my parents have butt heads on my lack
of yard management, i e. Grass cutting, etc. From a
biology standpoint, how do I balance having my yard be
a wild place without my parents concern of me inviting

(08:54):
in rats and such? Is it even that important? How
do other animals maintain their spaces so I don't feel
like an evil human for maintaining mine to other beings detriment?
Is there a bear or an animal who's obsessed with
having a flat, green lawn? Am I too much of
a hippie? Thanks so much, Love your pod. This is
from Seth Hi Seth, So this is a great question.

(09:19):
Humans who love nature and animals often have a bit
of a conundrum we may love wildlife, but we don't
want to be exploited by certain urban animals like rats, mice, ticks, mosquitoes, roaches, etc.
Whose presence in our home can be gross, if not
outright dangerous to our health. So first things first, you
are not evil for maintaining your home in such a

(09:42):
way that is good for your health. So as much
as I love animals, including things like rats and mice,
having them in your home is not healthy. So I
don't think you should feel guilty at all for trying
to prevent that from happening. I'm very much in favor
of prioritizing your health and safety inside your home. It's

(10:03):
much better to try to prevent mice and rats from
getting in your home by say, making sure you don't
have food left out, a lot of nooks and crannies
for them to hide in, that your house is nice
and sealed, not leaving garbage bins open and accessible outside.
I'll mention other techniques to keep them out of your home.

(10:24):
So prevention is the best. So how do you keep
pests out while having a nice natural yard that's not
just kind of a golf course? Right? So I think
it is possible, But let's get into it, because there's
a lot of different things you can do. First of all,

(10:44):
it kind of depends on your location, like what pests
really present an issue in your location, right, Like what
species of mice and rats live near where you live.
It's always good to kind of be familiar with what
diseases are present in your area, right because that kind
of changes can change your risk toalants. Right Like, if

(11:06):
you live somewhere where lime disease is a big deal,
having tall grass might be too risky. Whereas if you
live somewhere where lime disease is not really an issue,
and there's not a lot of ticks, you know, you
might want to have long grass and that might be fine.
Same thing with mice and rats. You can kind of
look into your area. You know, hantavirus things like that

(11:28):
are very very rare. I wouldn't personally, like be too
preoccupied with worrying about it, but it's always good to
kind of know if that's something that happens in your area,
and just be careful of having say like sheds or
enclosed areas where mice and rats can get into where
you would go in and then breathe, because that's how
those kinds of diseases transmit. But yeah, so in general,

(11:52):
just if you get familiar, like find out like where
you live, what are the pests that are the most
likely to cause your problems, and also if there's any
diseases that are occur or are common in your area
to watch out for, because again, I think it is
really important to take care of your health as much
as it is important to be friendly to wildlife. So

(12:14):
once you know what you're dealing with, you're going to
be better able to make risk assessments for what you're
willing to put up with. Essentially, I would say if
you live in an area with a lot of pests
like ticks especially, but also mice and rats, tall grass
is going to be a risk factor for those things

(12:34):
either getting on you like ticks or getting in your
home because ticks love tall grass, mice and rats love
to hide around in tall grass, So if you have
a lot of tall grass, yeah, that might be a problem.
And I mean it's not even necessary. I feel like,
I don't know where I've heard this notion, but I
feel like there's an idea that like dead tall grass

(12:55):
is bad because that's where all the ticks are, but
actually ticks really like moist environments. If you have a
really lush, tall wawnd, that actually might host a lot
of ticks. So if you have pets, that might be
a huge problem. And of course for you too, it
might be an issue walking around in that unless you

(13:16):
have paths that you can walk in or wear high
socks or long pants all the time. So rats, they
are attracted to yards with a lot of hiding spots
and food resources. So rats love things like wood piles.
So if you've got a great woodpile right next to
your house, that might not be great if you live

(13:38):
somewhere or there's a lot of rats and you can't
be sure that your house is completely sealed after them,
because they love being in the woodpile, and if that's
like right up next to your house, that's a nice
entry point for them. They also love unsecured structures, like
if you've got that old, loose, open shed, rats are
gonna love to go in there. Bird Seed, Now, this

(14:00):
is one that's kind of sad, right because if you
like to have a bird feeder or something out in
your yard, that's also going to attract rats. So if
rats are a problem, I would say you might actually
want to get rid of that bird feeder, maybe repace
it for a replace it with a bird fountain water fountain,
because that is just as if not more important than

(14:20):
a bird feeder for their health ause you're providing them
with a nice fresh source of flowing water, and you
will attract birds to your yard. They love bird baths,
they love bird feeders. So if rats are a problem
for you, maybe switch your bird feeder with seeds for
a bird bath or a bird fountain, or have a
bird feeder that's really really secure. But that's gonna be

(14:43):
tough because even if it's like really secure in terms
of only birds can get at it, the birds are
going to scatter seeds around, So that's a risk factor.
It's kind of up to you again, what's more important
to you and what your risk tolerance is. One way
to have your yard be a nice beacon for local
wildlife while also not being too welcoming too pests is

(15:06):
to have kind of like a semi maintained yard where
you have native plants right and can look up plants
that are native to your area. So instead of having
a lawn that gets really tall, you have a bunch
of plants that grow in your area, and then you
can kind of like groom them a bit, right, Like,

(15:28):
the best way to groom these plants, like to discourage
say rats from setting up shop while encouraging birds and
insects and all sorts of other animals that love these
plants is by making sure at the base of the
plant that there's not allowed of like dense ground coverage
near the base, so like sort of pruning the base
of the plant wild, maybe allowing the branches and everything

(15:49):
to grow as wild as you want. It's a good
way to have wild plants that animals like while not
creating sort of a suitable home for say rats. And yeah,
actually something that's kind of fun is if you live
in an area with hawks and owls, raptors, predators, predatory birds,

(16:13):
having trees even dead ones can be a nice perch
for them to look out for rodents. So like, if
you have I mean this is going to depend on
your preference, probably your neighbor's preference too, And also make
sure you don't live in an area with a lot
of fire risk. Right for having dead trees in your yard,

(16:34):
I certainly think that you should always Again, like it's
great to be welcoming to wildlife. You got to know
the risks of your areas of wildfires, is it ticks,
things like that, and then make sure you kind of
modify your yard to keep you safe while welcoming animals.
That being said, you have like a sort of a

(16:54):
dead tree in your yard and you don't really want
to get rid of it, right like, you don't mind
how it looks. That's a nice perch for a hawk
ornel and that will also help you with your rodent problem.
And living trees are also great perches for raptors. So
if you don't like the spooky dead tree asthetic haunted house, look,

(17:18):
don't worry. You don't need to keep dead trees in
your yard. You can have plenty of perches for hawks
and owls. Anyways, there is I don't know how effective
this is, but I'll throw it out there. Anyways, you
could potentially go on the offense by having plants that
rats actively dislike, like sage. I've read peppermint that could

(17:41):
offend them due to their strong smell. A note of
caution about peppermint, Apparently it's very very good at taking
over a garden or yard. So you gotta really like
peppermint to plant it. But yeah, I'm not really sure,
Like I think if you plant those they might I
just avoid those plants specifically. I don't know that they

(18:03):
would avoid your whole yard, though. I think a better
strategy potentially would be to replace. Say, you know, if
you don't like mowing the lan right that's legit. I
don't like mowing the lan I don't even have a lawn.
I don't have a yard right now, so who am
I to talk. But if you don't like mowing your

(18:24):
lawn and you want some kind of ground cover, there's
a lot of groundcovers you can get that are really
low maintenance and also don't provide a lot of coverage
for animals that you may not want like rats, mice, ticks, etc.
While still being welcoming to local wildlife. So again I

(18:47):
would definitely advise probably the best thing is if you
have access to it, if you can afford it, finding
plants that are local to you, like native plants, and
then planting those, and there might be native groundcovers for
your area, but you can also just look into other groundcovers.
So here are some examples of ground covers that are

(19:12):
not so tall and thick that they would potentially welcome
rats in. There's clover, there's diamondia. There's creeping time, which
may repel rats with its odor. Again, I don't know.
I'm a little skeptical of the repellent plants when it
comes to rats. I think rats are pretty stubborn when

(19:32):
they want to get somewhere. There's, honestly, so a lot
of choices that you can find something that works with
your aesthetic preferences, your yard maintenance preferences. Right, Like, if
you kind of want to set it and forget it,
you can probably find a creeping ground cover that is
helpful for that. Just yeah, do a little bit of
research into it, look into it. Some ground covers can

(19:54):
be really aggressive, so it might actually require more maintenance
than you would like. So yeah, but there are ground
covers other than grass that don't really require mowing. But
we'll also keep your yard from becoming like a haven
for ticks and rats. But I hope I've given you
a range of options that might be helpful for you

(20:16):
going forward. All right, So this email is called cats
can't Taste Sweet, but dot dot dot very suspenseful. Hi, Katie,
I know cats can't taste sweet, meaning they can't taste sweetness.
But my terrible tabby Phantom makes me think he can.
He is constantly trying to lick my beer when he

(20:37):
thinks I'm not looking. He will even lick coffee mugs
if they are forgotten to be put back in the kitchen.
One time I was eating white chocolate and Phantom was
so persistent. I gave him a very tiny piece, thinking
he wouldn't like it. He chowed down and then wanted more.
He did not get any more. By the way, I've

(20:57):
never known a cat to be so particular about what
they want to eat eat. I know some cats like
people food, but why is he drawn to all these
sweet things? Thank you for the pod and for answering
all our questions. Melissa, So, I just did in a
photo from the alleged sweet thief, and he looks really
innocent to me. I don't know what to tell you. Melissa,
looks innocent. Innocent before proven guilty, is what I say.

(21:22):
But to answer your question, this is really interesting. First,
let's address the baseline premise, right, can cats taste sweet things?
So most of the evidence indicates that cats can't taste
sugar in the same way that we do right When
we taste sugar in general, we go bananas. We love it.

(21:45):
It tastes really good to us. The two thousand and
six study cats Lack a sweet Taste receptor found that
cats have an unexpressed tasks one R two gene, and
that is one of the two known genes that controls

(22:06):
sweet taste receptors. So the other gene tests one or three,
seems to function fine in cats. So it's not that
they completely lack any genes that could potentially detect sweet taste.
It's that one of the main ones does not seem
to function. And also, there have been studies that show
cats do not seem to have a preference for sugar

(22:28):
at all, they don't seem to be attracted to it.
So many have interpreted this study as evidence that cats
categorically cannot taste sweet right, like, they just can't taste
it in the same way we can't taste blue, or
you can't taste blue, you amateurs. So I think it
might be more nuanced than cats just not being able

(22:50):
to detect sweetness at all. I think it does show
they definitely have a difference in gene expression when it
comes to the ability to detect sweetness, which I think
for it might make it a really weak flavor, right
they might some cats may not be able to taste
it at all, some you know, maybe just really weak

(23:11):
and they don't really notice it. The study also goes
on to talk about how there are individual differences of
gene expression for these genes and cats, so that leaves
us with a few interesting possibilities. So one is that
most cats cannot taste sugar, but some cats have a
mutation that allow them to express that tas one or

(23:32):
two gene or another related gene that actually allows them
to taste the sweet better. Another option is that most
cats have a weak ability to taste sugar, like it's
not very strong. Maybe they don't even notice it, so
they're typically unresponsive to it. But there are some cats who,

(23:53):
due to genetic variability, have a stronger response to sugar,
maybe stronger taste in general, right like in humans we
have supertasters who have more taste buds on their tongue.
And then the other option is that it is simply
not possible for any cat to taste sugar, regardless of
gene expression. So all these things I think are plausible.

(24:15):
I lean more towards the more variable response, where some
cats might be able to detect it really weakly, and
maybe for some very particular cats with a particular gene
mutation or a supertaster can actually taste it more strongly.
That would be my guess. But all these things are possible.

(24:37):
So yeah. The reason I lean towards maybe cats not
being absolutely in no circumstance being able to taste sweetness
is because the genes for sugar tasting is there, just
that one of them does normally doesn't function. So they
have like the recipes right for being able to taste sugar,

(24:57):
and one of them functions. Maybe that doesn't do any
and one of them typically doesn't function, but maybe in
some cats it actually is expressed more so, Yeah, it
could be a situation similar to super tasters in humans.
I'm actually something of a super taste or myself. Not
to brag, it's actually not a brag. It sucks. So

(25:20):
it's a pretty useless superpower. It doesn't mean I'm a
great somolier or food taste or whatever. Maybe some super
tasters are. I lack the skill to go along with it.
For me, it just means that a lot of things
taste yucky. So I hate red velvet cake because it
tastes really better to me. I believe it's because there

(25:42):
is a red food dye in it that I can
kind of taste a bitterness to that. Most people who
don't have like the extra taste buds, they can't taste it.
So what good does that do me? I just can't
eat red velvet cake, so I have a higher density
of taste buds on my tongue. A lot of super
tasters are very sensitive to sour and bitter, which is

(26:05):
interesting because I actually like dark chocolate and I like
things that are sour in the acidic sense, like lemons,
things like that. But it is interesting because a lot
of certain sour tastes like cream, cheese, yogurt, sour cream
are repulsive to me. I cannot handle it. Ah, So yeah,

(26:30):
which again it could be a psychological response. Though I
might have had a bad experience when I was a
kid with like sour milk or something right, and that
put me off sour tasting dairy products. So you know,
we might have a situation where it's a combination of
my weird genetic mutation having more taste buds and then

(26:51):
my learned response to foods, And so this also can
go for your cat. Right, So there's a possibility that
your cat may not be able to taste sweetness. Right,
he could, or maybe he can't, But he's simply highly
socially curious and engaged, and he can tell what you like.

(27:14):
So maybe you like sweet things and he can see, Oh, man,
Melissa really loves this white chocolate, and he's really socially
aware and he gets a bad case of kitty fomo
and he really wants what you enjoyed so thoroughly right,
So maybe he saw you sip in that beer. Like, man,
Melissa really loves that beer. It's got to be great.

(27:36):
He goes and tastes it, and whether or not he
can enjoy the sweetness of it, he might be. Just
the thrill of tasting a thing that you have tasted
might be enough for him to have a positive association
with it. So yeah, some cats are extremely interested in
human food, whereas others are less interested. This could be

(27:59):
due to differences taste or differences in their sociability, or
combination of both factors. So I unfortunately cannot recommend like
a taste test for your cat of sugar, coffee beer,
because those things aren't, you know, really good for cats. Obviously,
a tiny lick of some residue it's not gonna hurt

(28:19):
your cat, but probably shouldn't encourage it, so you might
kind of have to live with the mystery of whether
your cat really has a sweet tooth or if he
just loves you so much he wants to eat what
you're eating. I could be both. So thank you guys
so much for your questions. I always have a blast
answering them. If you have a question you'd like me

(28:41):
to answer on the show, you can write to me
at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com. Can be
about evolutionary biology, can be about your pets, can be
about that poor lonely pigeon who lost all his friends
because gosh, you know, I don't. I'm not gonna spill

(29:01):
the tea on this pigeon. I feel like his business
is his business. Well, guys, thank you so much for listening,
and thanks to the Space Cossics for their super awesome
song ex Aluminus. Creature features the production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio,
app Apple podcasts or hey, guess what where have you
listen to your favorite shows. I'm not your mother, and

(29:22):
I can't tell you what to do. I can tell you.
Can you not cats? But can you have a little
bit of white chocolate as a treat? Yes? Yes, you
can see you next Wednesday.