Are animals smarter than we think? Studies have demonstrated that many animals are capable of learning conceptual tasks; in our research we explored pigeon learning in the string task. The string task is a process in which a subject is presented with two or more strings, usually with a reward attached to at least one of the strings. The subject solves the task by selecting the string that has the reward. Once subjects learn to solve the basic string task, an interesting variation is to introduce a gap into one of the strings; one string is connected and one string is disconnected (from the reward) by a gap. Can our subjects (pigeons) still solve the string task when one string has a gap before the reward? Are they sensitive to the “connectedness” of the string and reward? These questions form the basis for our current research. In the task two “virtual” strings (on a touch-screen monitor) were presented. Each string contained a food dish along its length, with one string connected and one string disconnected (gap) to the food dish on the string. The pigeons had to select and “reel in” the string connected to the food to get the reward. Though they started out with accuracy scores just below 50%, we found that our pigeons increased their first choice accuracy (for the connected string) from 50% to 90% in only two weeks."