Do pigeons have high IQ?

Yes, pigeons have high IQ relative to many other birds and animals, and they are considered one of the most intelligent bird species, with cognitive abilities that rival primates and dogs in some tasks. Research on pigeon intelligence has shown they have excellent visual memory, spatial navigation, and pattern recognition, they can recognize individual human faces and remember them for years, recognize themselves in mirrors, learn complex routes, and have been trained to distinguish paintings by different artists like Monet and Picasso and even detect cancer in medical images in laboratory studies. Pigeons can count to some extent, understand abstract concepts like same and different, and learn to use tools in some contexts. They have extraordinary homing ability, navigating hundreds of miles back to their home loft using magnetic fields, sun position, and landmarks. Their brain to body ratio is relatively high. In terms of IQ tests adapted for animals, pigeons perform very well on visual discrimination and memory tasks, outperforming many mammals. However, intelligence is multifaceted, and pigeons excel in visual and spatial intelligence but are less adept at social intelligence like dogs who understand human gestures better. So while pigeons have high IQ in visual and spatial domains and are surprisingly intelligent, their intelligence is different from human IQ and is specialized for their ecological needs like navigation and foraging, making them one of the smartest bird species.