Repeated training of homing pigeons reveals age-dependent idiosyncrasy and visual landmark use

Griffiths, Charlotte; Schiffner, Ingo; Price, Emily; Charnell-Hughes, Meghan; Kishkinev, Dmitry; Holland, Richard A.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2021.05.004

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…These data, followed by confirmatory experiments in the next few years (3)(4)(5), showed that visual information (landmarks) could be important in enabling pigeons to home, in addition to the other cues (especially magnetic and olfactory) that had long been the focus of the pigeon homing community. More than two decades on, the degree to which visual landmarks influence the route a pigeon takes toward its home loft and the speed at which it does so continues to be debated and elucidated [e.g., (6)(7)(8)(9)]. Some of the questions that arose from those early pigeon release data, such as the importance of landmarks at points later in a journey rather than just at the starting point, had to wait until the development of appropriate technology such as GPS tags for tracking animals [e.g., (10,11)].…”

Section: Navigation and Visual Landmarksmentioning

confidence: 99%

It Began in Ponds and Rivers: Charting the Beginnings of the Ecology of Fish Cognition

Healy

Patton

2022

Front. Vet. Sci.

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But fish cognitive ecology did not begin in rivers and streams. Rather, one of the starting points for work on fish cognitive ecology was work done on the use of visual cues by homing pigeons. Prior to working with fish, Victoria Braithwaite helped to establish that homing pigeons rely not just on magnetic and olfactory cues but also on visual cues for successful return to their home loft. Simple, elegant experiments on homing established Victoria's ability to develop experimental manipulations to examine the role of visual cues in navigation by fish in familiar areas. This work formed the basis of a rich seam of work whereby a fish's ecology was used to propose hypotheses and predictions as to preferred cue use, and then cognitive abilities in a variety of fish species, from model systems (Atlantic salmon and sticklebacks) to the Panamanian Brachyraphis episcopi. Cognitive ecology in fish led to substantial work on fish pain and welfare, but was never left behind, with some of Victoria's last work addressed to determining the neural instantiation of cognitive variation.

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