Pigeon Smarter Than Bank Worker, Can Use Touchscreen Correctly [Video]

Pigeons are smarter than a lot of bank employees out there, and now I have proof. Edward Wasserman and his colleagues in the psychology department at the University of Iowa recently posted the video evidence. Check it out down below.

In the video, you’re about to find out that pigeons are a lot smarter than you realized. You will see the experimental pigeon in question actually peck the right sequence of circles and strings to solve the puzzle and earn the treat.

What’s amazing to many observers is that the pictures on the touchscreen don’t look much like food. But the pigeon still figures out what he’s got to peck to make the researcher cough up the goodies.

I’m not too surprised. Pigeons have always been smarter than the average bear. Check out the 1903 photograph of the superspy pigeon complete with camera.

And the top photograph is a specimen of the famous homing pigeon. Sure, some homing pigeons do get lost. And so do you when you don’t have your GPS turned on.

While this pigeon is effortlessly playing his touchscreen, a German bank employee was falling asleep on the job, smacking the keyboard — and accidentally transferring as much as a cool $311 million out of some retiree’s account.

Estimates of the actual amount of money wrongly shipped do vary, but even the smaller amount of $293 million reported by CNN Money is a hefty chunk of change.

The clerk claimed that he fell asleep while entering the numeral 2 and thus somehow ended up making a €222,222,222 transfer.

Banks usually like to keep their cases of fumble fingers on the downlow, but the story ended up being in revealed in a German court this week when the gal who was supposed to double-check the order actually sued to get her job back after she was canned over the error.

You know what’s even better? The labor court agreed. To err is human. The bank can’t fire somebody over something like that.

If they wanted someone who knew their way around a touchscreen, they should have hired some smart guy like a pigeon.

Enjoy the video proof that pigeons are smarter:

[1903 spy pigeon photo by Dr. Julius Neubronner via Wikimedia Commons]

[homing pigeon photo by Andreas Trepte via Wikimedia Commons]