Verharve: The Pigeon As a Quality-Control Inspector

Question 1

Overview

Answer 1

Experiment explores the possibility of using pigeons to perform quality control inspections of commercial products

This job is usually performed by humans and requires good visual acuity and color vision, but demands very little manual dexterity

Question 2

Method

Answer 2

Pigeons were trained to detect “skags” [defective pills], defined as those that are: off-color, have a piece of gelatin sticking out, have a dent in it, have an extra cap

Pigeons were reinforced for differentiating a skag from acceptable pill

No food was given for correctly identify a normal pill

The pigeons were punished for false alarms and misses

After week two, pigeons that have been trained together inspected on a 99% correct basis

Question 3

Issues/solutions

Answer 3

The company decided against using pigeons to protest from the Humane Society and the consumers of drugs who did not like the idea of having animals so close to their medicine

During training, the skags were labeled as such

However, in a normal work environment there be no way of determining when to reinforce or punish the pigeons, and thus the discrimination training would quickly deteriorate

Possible solutions:

1. Use known skags to check the integrity of discrimination training – this would be expensive
2. Have two pigeon simultaneously checking a pill and they get one reinforced if and only if they agree
   * Verhave’s suggestion