While some people revile pigeons, others admire and study the birds' brainy behaviour. A team of Japanese scientists earned the 1995 Ig Nobel Prize in psychology by showing that pigeons can identify who painted a particular painting.

Presumably, some people learn on their own to appreciate the artworks of the great masters, but many learn from a teacher, either directly in a school or museum, or indirectly through books, magazines and television programmes. Presumably, so is it with pigeons.

Shigeru Watanabe, a psychology professor at Keio University, and his colleagues Junko Sakamoto and Masumi Wakita set out to teach a group of pigeons how to distinguish paintings by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) from those by Claude Monet (1840-1926).

The task was not easy. The pigeons had had no previous exposure to the works of either artist. As Watanabe, Sakamoto and Wakita later described it, these were "eight experimentally naive pigeons".

The paintings used for teaching purposes included Monet's Terrace of Saint-Adresse (1866), Poplars of Giverny (1888) and nine others. The Picasso instruction consisted of viewing Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Women Playing with a Ball on a Beach (1932) and eight others. The pigeons viewed projected slides, not the original paintings. They also watched videotapes.

The lessons were not altogether unlike those in university art history courses. In response to each slide, the pigeons were asked to either peck at a key or refrain from doing so. The teachers rewarded them with hemp seeds.

In a set of advanced tests, the birds showed the ability to recognise Picasso paintings projected upside down. But they had trouble with topsy-turvy Monets. On balance, the results were about as good as any art teacher could reasonably hope for.

Later, Watanabe shifted his attention from pigeons to sparrows, and from paintings to music. In 1999, he and a colleague published a report explaining how they had taught seven sparrows to distinguish between the musical works of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and those of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). They also taught a different group of sparrows to distinguish between the music of Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) and Eliot Carter (1908-).

In 2001, Watanabe returned to the field of his previous achievements. He trained pigeons to discriminate between paintings by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) and Marc Chagall (1887-1985). He then demonstrated, straightforwardly, that the birds can reach a level of expertise comparable to that of college students.

From the visual arts, Watanabe moved on to the spoken. Though he has not yet published a formal study, reports in the Japanese press indicate that he taught birds - in this case Paddy birds - to discriminate between spoken readings, in Japanese and in English, of the novel The Book of Genji.

Watanabe worked these wonders with students of whom, traditionally, little was expected. His triumphs may inspire other educators to soar, unafraid, above the discouragement of low expectations.

· Marc Abrahams is currently taking the Ig Nobel Tour 2006 to Oxford, Edinburgh, St Andrews, Warrington and London. Tickets are free. Details at www.educationtheguardian.com/conferences