Music discriminations by pigeons.

Pigeons learned to discriminate between complex musical sequences. Two birds responded at more than 80% correct in a single-operandum discrimination learning task when the S+ was a 1-min excerpt of flute music and the S- was a 1min excerpt of Hindemith viola music (Experiment 1). Four pigeons responded at more than 70% correct when they were required to peck the left of two disks during presentations of any portion of a 20-min organ piece and to peck the right during any portion of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring for orchestra (Experiment 2). These discriminations were learned slowly. However, the birds generalized consistently and independently of the instruments involved when presented with novel musical excerpts (Experiment 3). They preferred the left Bach disk when ,novel excerpts from Buxtehude and Scarlatti were introduced and the right disk when novel excerpts from Eliot Carter, Walter Piston, and another Stravinsky work were introduced. People responded similarly. Therefore the pigeon's response to complex auditory events may be more like the human's than is often assumed.