Move over, cancer-detecting dogs and fruit flies - pigeons are now being trained to identify breast

Move over, cancer-detecting dogs and fruit flies - pigeons are now being trained to identify breast tumors, both malignant and benign!Using their excellent vision, 16 pigeons (who are seasoned study-participants) were tasked to look at mammograms and slides of breast tissue from biopsies.In one experiment, the pigeons were trained to peck a blue rectangle when shown benign tissue, and a yellow rectangle when shown malignant tissue. While we can’t expect to make an appointment with a pigeon doctor anytime soon, we can look forward to pigeons serving as “surrogates for human subjects in medical image perception studies because they can be used in repetitive ways that few people could tolerate.”Read more about the experiments here.  -- source link

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