AbstractPigeons attack or threaten animate and inanimate targets. The assessment of their aggressiveness was studied by exposing them in their home cages to three different stimuli: the experimenter's hand, a live pigeon, and a rear‐projected conspecific image when the birds were exposed to intermittent access to food. A positive correlation between the hand test and live pigeon test was evident, but no relationship between either of these responses and the response to a pictorial image was observed. These results combined with other ethological observations cast doubts on the usefulness of schedule‐induced responses to pictorial targets in the assessment of the individual aggressiveness in pigeons, but suggest that the hand test is an adequate and reliable procedure for such evaluati