2 JUNE 2021
You can impress family members and friends with magic tricks, but you can also use them to study the differences in perception between animals and humans – and a new study highlights how Eurasian jays aren t quite as susceptible to sleight of hand as we are.
Jays and other large-brained birds often use techniques similar to sleight of hand to keep food concealed in their beaks and away from potential scavengers, which adds another level of intrigue when it comes to how they react to magic performed by a person. A magic trick works because it violates your expectations, psychologist Elias Garcia-Pelegrin, from the University of Cambridge in the UK, told The Academic Times.
Magic Tricks May Fool You, but These Birds Can See Through Them
A small experiment using sleights of hand and illusions offers insights into how birds and people perceive the world.
Video
Homer the Eurasian jay was not gulled by the palm transfer. Video by Alexandra Schnell/University of Cambridge
June 1, 2021, 11:34 a.m. ET
The coin is in the illusionist’s left hand, now it’s in the right or is it? Sleight of hand tricks are old standbys for magicians, street performers and people who’ve had a little too much to drink at parties.
On humans, the deceptions work pretty well. But it turns out that birds don’t always fall for the same illusions.
Sarah Byosiere was at a barbecue just outside Melbourne, Australia, when she came up with the idea of presenting optical illusions to dogs. It was 2015, and she was visiting La Trobe University shortly after finishing a master’s degree on canine cognition back home in the US. Chatting at the barbecue with a group of psychologists who were studying how the human brain perceives visual illusions, it struck her that the same approach could provide a window into how dogs see the world around them and how their perception differs from our own. “We had this crazy question of: Could you give a dog an illusion, and would they be able to see it?” she recalls.