Do Pigeons Really have Anything to do with High Rollers?

October 21, 2010 | Article Category: Slots

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Recently, an article appeared in Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper comparing pigeons to high rollers. Yes, the article was speaking about those pesky birds that fly overhead, and yes, it did compare them to high rollers.

The research that took place in the United States, used the pigeons to test how they would react to different rewards, in order to compare how the birds would cope with choosing larger or smaller rewards with different outcomes.

The study used the equivalent of human slot machines that can be found in both online casinos, and land based casinos, for birds. Interestingly, just like many high rollers, the pigeons could not resist going for the big jackpot, even when the odds were against them, and they could have had a surer win for less gain.

Of course, the pigeons would not be interested in coins coming out of their "fruit machines," but would rather earn food, so researchers used food pellets as rewards. The birds had been trained to peck on one of the two keys offered, which displayed both horizontal lines, and vertical lines, as well as four different colors.

The birds would receive different numbers of food pellets according to the different displays that were produced from the pecking.

The birds were presented with two options. If they pecked on the key with the horizontal line, they were assured of three food pellets no matter which colors appeared, however, if they pecked on the vertical line key, they would only receive the food pellets if the vertical line was a specific color. However, this had only a 20% chance of occurring, and when it did, the birds would receive 10 food pellets, and none if it did not occur.

Eight pigeons were used in the experiment, and six of them kept trying to go for the vertical line key in the hopes of winning the larger jackpot, of 10 food pellets, even though they did not win them every time. If the birds had chosen to go for the horizontal lines, they would have won 50% more pellets, if they had stuck with that decision, than if they had gone with the vertical lines.

'The results of these experiments suggest that pigeons show a tendency to make maladaptive decisions similar to those of humans. That is, pigeons prefer a signal for a low probability, high payoff alternative over a signal for a certain low payoff alternative that on average provides 50% more reinforcement," said Psychologist Professor Thomas Zentall, and Jessica Stanger, both from the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

The researchers felt that the findings in this unusual experiment may have some connection to the gambling behavior found in humans. They explained: "Matching a winning lottery ticket comes well before obtaining the reward, and watching the winning pattern as it comes up on a slot machine comes before the money is received. Would gamblers wager as often as they do if there were no signals for the occasions of their winning (For example, slot machine gamblers could not see the three wheels, roulette players could not see the ball skipping over the slots in the wheel?)"

With the great variety of slots games out there, especially for those playing in online casinos, it seems unlikely that players would be interested in wagering their money on games where they could not see the wheels spinning to their winning, or not winning, combinations.

This is certainly (bird) food for thought!

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