Abstract
Although pigeons have been shown to be susceptible to several size and length illusions, other avian species have not been tested intensively for illusory perception. Here we report how bantams perceive the Zöllner figure, in which parallel lines look nonparallel due to short crosshatches superimposed on the lines. Watanabe et al. (Cognition 119:137–141, 2011) showed that pigeons, like humans, perceived parallel lines as nonparallel but that the orientation of subjective convergence was opposite to that of humans. We trained three bantams to peck at the narrower (or wider) of the two gaps at the end of a pair of nonparallel lines. After adapting them to target lines with randomly oriented crosshatches (which result in no apparent illusion to humans), we tested the bantams’ responses on randomly inserted probe trials, in which crosshatches that should induce the standard Zöllner-like illusion for humans replaced the randomly oriented ones. The results suggested bantams, like pigeons, perceive a reversed Zöllner illusion.
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Acknowledgments
Sota Watanabe, Noriyuki Nakamura, and Kazuo Fujita are grateful to Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Sakyo, Kyoto, Japan. This study was supported by Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellows 20096245 to Sota Watanabe and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research 20220004 to KF, and by the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science, and Technology (MEXT) Global COE Program, D-07, to Kyoto University. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sota Watanabe, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Yoshida-honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan. E-mail: sota.m.watanabe@gmail.com. This experiment was approved by the Committee for Animal Experiments, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University. We wish to thank James R. Anderson for his careful editing of an earlier version of the manuscript.
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Watanabe, S., Nakamura, N. & Fujita, K. Bantams (Gallus gallus domesticus) also perceive a reversed Zöllner illusion. Anim Cogn 16, 109–115 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-012-0556-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-012-0556-0