13 July 2026

There’s a famous problem that humans get wrong almost all the time but pigeons get right. It’s called the Monty Hall Problem, named after the TV host, co-creator and co-producer of television’s Let’s Make A Deal. It works like this:

There are three closed doors, one with a prize behind it, two with goats. Suppose you and the pigeon both pick Door #1.

You still don’t know where the prize is but Monty Hall does know and he opens one of the two remaining doors that has a goat behind it.

Monty asks you, “Do you want to stay with your choice of Door #1 or do you want to switch?”

Well, it looks like you have a 50-50 chance of winning so you stick with Door #1. This is a losing strategy. Pigeons switch doors and win 2/3 of the time.

“Pigeons often perform quite impressively on tasks requiring them to estimate relative probabilities, in some cases eclipsing human performance.” In 2010 scientists spent a month testing 6 pigeons using a similar setup. Within 30 days the pigeons picked the right door 96% of the time. Then they tested 12 humans and the results were lousy.

Pigeons get it. Humans don’t. This video explains how switching doors works best. I see the statistics, but my gut still comes up with the wrong answer.

Read Live Science: Pigeons Beat Humans at Solving ‘Monty Hall’ Problem to find out why pigeons are better at this than we are.

Meanwhile this pigeon picks Door #1.

video embedded from Collab Video Archive on YouTube