Magnets Interfere with Pigeon Homing

Keeton, William T.

doi:10.1073/pnas.68.1.102

Cited by 273 publications

(117 citation statements)

References 11 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

108

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…If pigeons reach home by a process of visually recognizing places, they should not be influenced by a disruption of the magnetic field (by attaching small magnets to the bird). Although initial studies (e.g., Keeton, 1971) suggested that magnetic-field disturbance disrupted homing, later studies have seriously questioned this conclusion (see the special section in the May 1987 issue of Animal Learning & Behavior).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Pigeons discriminate pictures of a geographic location

Wilkie

Willson

Kardal

1989

Animal Learning & Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Four pigeons previously trained to home to the roof of the University of British Columbia psychology building and 4 nonhoming pigeons were trained to discriminate between two sets of color slides projected onto a pecking panel of a Skinner box. One slide set consisted of photographs taken in the vicinity of the psychology building; the other set consisted of similar views taken at locations not previously visited by the homing subjects. All subjects were rewarded for pecking during slides from the first but not the second set. Every few sessions, new "Home" and "Away" slides were introduced during transfer tests. In a final transfer test, a completely new tray of Home and Away slides was introduced. The homing pigeons were slightly (but not statistically significantly) better at discriminating Home from Away slides. The implications of these results for understanding pigeons' homing behavior, concept attainment, and spatial memory are discussed.Pigeons appear to be able to form conceptual discriminations based on photographs of such natural objects as people, fish, water, trees, and leaves (see Herrnstein, 1984, for a review). In these studies, pigeons were rewarded for pecking at projected images that contained the target object (e.g., a tree), and were not rewarded for pecking at images in which the target was absent. Typically, pigeons learned these discriminations rapidly, showed good transfer to novel instances of the target category, and remembered these discriminations over periods of many months (e.g., Vaughan & Greene, 1984). Pigeons seemed to treat these two-dimensional projected images as if they represented "real" three-dimensional objects. Both Cabe (1976) and Lumsden (1977) have shown that pigeons transfer discriminations of actual objects to photographs of the same objects. In addition, Looney and Cohen (1974) have shown that pigeons will attack photographs of conspecifics in situations in which aggressive responding is normally elicited. Perhaps the most convincing evidence that birds treat photographic projections as if these images were actual objects comes from a study of Roberts and Weigl (1984). In that study, investigators tested wild-eaught dark-eyedjuncos in a test chamber that contained two perches mounted on end walls containing projection screens. Images of this species' distinctive summer and winter habitats were projected onto the two screens, and the subjects' preference for an image was measured by recording how much time they spent This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. John Zahradnik kindly donated racing homing pigeons whose offspring served as subjects in this research. C. Von Borman greatly assisted with the data analysis. Send correspondence regarding this paper to Donald M. Wilkie, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T IV7, Canada, or the following E-Mail address: userdonw@mtsg.ubc.ca. on the perch in front of the respective image. Roberts and Weigl found that winter-...

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Pigeons discriminate pictures of a geographic location

Wilkie

Willson

Kardal

1989

Animal Learning & Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Among the aspects studied was the homing ability of insects (honey bee) (Gould 1980), crustaceans (lobster) (Boles and Lohmann 2003), fishes (salmonids) (Quinn and Brannon 1982), amphibians (newt) (Phillips 1986), reptiles (turtles) (Lohmann et al 1999), or birds (pidgeon) (Keeton 1971).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of magnetic field on permeability of egg shells of salmonid fishes

Sadowski¹,

Winnicki²,

Formicki³

et al. 2007

Acta Icth et Piscat

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

. 2007. The effect of magnetic field on permeability of egg shells of salmonid fishes. Acta Ichthyol. Piscat. 37 (2): 129-135.Background. The effect of the magnetic field on fish egg shells has not attracted major interest of researchers, even though it could have been predicted that such effect may be vital to fish embryogenesis. One of the hitherto-neglected aspects of the magnetic field action of fish eggs are the changes in the egg shell permeability and possible alteration of the process of embryogenesis. Studying this process and learning the associated phenomena may be important in explaining cases of substantial mortality of the embryos. Materials and Methods. Fish eggs (Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L.; sea trout, Salmo trutta L.; and rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss (Walbaum, 1792) and isolated egg shells, in a custom-made osmometer setups, were subjected to the action of a stable magnetic field (2 mT). The ultrastructure of the egg-shells was studied using a scanning electron microscope (JEOL JSM 6100). Results. Stable magnetic field (2 mT), affecting fish eggs, caused statistically significant increase in the egg-shell permeability to water, in the period of the egg activation (and also less distinct increase during the entire embryogenesis). Conclusion. Weak, stable magnetic field increases egg-shell permeability to water affecting water management processes in fish eggs, during incubation. This phenomenon may have practical implications for fish hatcheries.

show abstract

“…This makes the performance of the birds that do find the loft even more astonishing. The current shift in research away from the emphasis on visual cues (5,6,11,12) is thus justified.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Homing in Pigeons with Impaired Vision

Schmidt-Koenig¹,

Schlichte²

1972

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In order to test the importance of vision in homing pigeons, their vision was impaired by frosted contact lenses. Pigeons wearing such lenses seemed unable to recognize artificial landmarks at 6-m distance. Nevertheless, most birds homed from distances of 15 km, and some even from 130-kin distance. This result indicates that, contrary to common expectation, vision need not play an essential role in homing.Attempts to explain homing in pigeons have usually focused on vision. A key role has been attributed to the measurement of astronomical data, as well as to the recognition of landmarks (1-4). Recently, a considerable shift away from an emphasis on visual cues has taken place (5, 6), although there have been earlier attempts to explain homing by nonvisual cues (7). However, experiments entailing interference with vision have not been common. We have now succeeded in fitting contact lenses to pigeon eyes (8), and have extended our preliminary homing experiments that used colored, partially painted, and frosted lenses (8). We report here data from flights of experienced birds at distances of 15 and 130 km from their homes. MATERIALS AND METHODSAll birds were fitted with clear contact lenses several days before each release. Habituation to wearing lenses considerably enhanced the willingness of the birds to fly upon release. On the evening before the release, the clear lenses were replaced with frosted lenses for the experimental birds, while clear lenses were left in the eyes of the control birds. Both groups were transported to the release site immediately before release, and were released in the usual manner (10). Initial orientation and homing performance were used as criteria for homing performance. The presence of lenses was checked upon arrival of each bird. Data from experimental birds that had lost one or both frosted lenses, or the frosted layer of one or both lenses, were discarded. RESULTS Fig. 1 gives initial orientation and homing performance of four releases from 15-km west, north, and south of the home loft under sunny conditions, including those published in ref 8. Fig. 2 gives initial orientation and homing performance of three releases from 130-km south, west, and north under sunny conditions. Initial orientation of one release (130-km north) could not be included in Fig. 2, because the distribution of the control birds was random. The original data of this release are, therefore, given in Fig. 3. In this instance initial orientation of experimental birds with frosted lenses was superior to that of controls.The preliminary finding (8, 9) has been confirmed: frosted lenses had no negative effect on the accuracy of initial orientation of experienced birds, though homing performance clearly was affected. Although many experimental birds did not reach home, a considerable number did so, some even at normal speeds. The number of experimental birds lost is somewhat misleading, inasmuch as several birds got close to the loft, but then missed it by some small distance. Such birds have been found ...

show abstract

Magnets Interfere with Pigeon Homing

Cited by 273 publications

References 11 publications

Pigeons discriminate pictures of a geographic location

Pigeons discriminate pictures of a geographic location

The effect of magnetic field on permeability of egg shells of salmonid fishes

Homing in Pigeons with Impaired Vision

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About