PIgeons as good as humans at detecting cancer

This week in the news there were a couple of articles about a research study that trained pigeons to look at medical images and decide if the images showed cancer or not.  Apparently the pigeons were able to read the images with accuracy equivalent to experienced humans.

I know that pigeons were trained previously in a similar way to use their eyes to find objects on the ocean surface from aircraft, for example finding survivors of an accident.

Here are links to a couple of stories from this week:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34878151
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/19/pigeons-can-identify-cancerous-tissue-on-x-rays-study-finds