The influence of experience in orientation: GPS tracking of homing pigeons released over the sea after directional training

Dell’Ariccia, Gaia; Dell’Omo, Giacomo; Lipp, Hans‐Peter

doi:10.1242/jeb.024554

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 19 publications

(22 reference statements)

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“…Uncertainty in a novel environment is typically indicated by a high frequency of turning and a slower traveling speed (18)(19)(20)(21). This was also the case here as focal fish in all groups showed increased tortuosity as they moved into the decision zone; however, only solitary individuals and those in smaller groups reduced their speed.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 59%

Fast and accurate decisions through collective vigilance in fish shoals

Ward

Herbert‐Read

Sumpter

et al. 2011

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

325

300

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Although it has been suggested that large animal groups should make better decisions than smaller groups, there are few empirical demonstrations of this phenomenon and still fewer explanations of the how these improvements may be made. Here we show that both speed and accuracy of decision making increase with group size in fish shoals under predation threat. We examined two plausible mechanisms for this improvement: first, that groups are guided by a small proportion of high-quality decision makers and, second, that group members use self-organized division of vigilance. Repeated testing of individuals showed no evidence of different decision-making abilities between individual fish. Instead, we suggest that shoals achieve greater decision-making efficiencies through division of labor combined with social information transfer. Our results should prompt reconsideration of how we view cooperation in animal groups with fluid membership.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 59%

Fast and accurate decisions through collective vigilance in fish shoals

Ward

Herbert‐Read

Sumpter

et al. 2011

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

325

300

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“…Nevertheless, it is perhaps rather unlikely to represent the real situation for a bird in its natural familiar area. Dell'Ariccia et al (Dell'Ariccia et al, 2009) clearly demonstrated this training direction effect without clock-shift in birds released over the sea. But it might also contribute to the strong clock-shift response seen in releases from distant familiar sites.…”

Section: The Nature Of Place Recognitionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Route following and the pigeon's familiar area map

Guilford

Biro

2014

Journal of Experimental Biology

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Homing pigeons (Columba livia) have been the central model of avian navigation research for many decades, but only more recently has research extended into understanding their mechanisms of orientation in the familiar area. The discovery (facilitated by GPS tracking) that pigeons gradually acquire with experience individually idiosyncratic routes home to which they remain faithful on repeated releases, even if displaced off-route, has helped uncover the fundamental role of familiar visual landmarks in the avian familiar area map. We evaluate the robustness and generality of the routefollowing phenomenon by examining extant studies in depth, including the single published counter-example, providing a detailed comparison of route efficiencies, flight corridor widths and fidelity. We combine this analysis with a review of inferences that can be drawn from other experimental approaches to understanding the nature of familiar area orientation in pigeons, including experiments on landmark recognition, and response to clock-shift, to build the first detailed picture of how bird orientation develops with experience of the familiar area. We articulate alternative hypotheses for how guidance might be controlled during route following, concluding that although much remains unknown, the details of route following strongly support a pilotage interpretation. Predictable patterns of efficiency increase, but limited to the local route, typical corridor widths of 100-200 m, high-fidelity pinch-points on route, attraction to landscape edges, and a robustness to clock-shift procedures, all demonstrate that birds can associatively acquire a map of their familiar area guided (at least partially) by direct visual control from memorised local landscape features.

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“…In order to control for release site effects on the vanishing bearings, and in particular for the possible effect of repeated training from the same direction (Dell'Ariccia et al, 2009a), we released also control pigeons for each experimental group and on the same days. The control pigeons were not trained in the training directions of the experimental pigeons, and thus were not influenced by the same training effect as the experimental groups.…”

Section: Vanishing Bearing Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Repeated training along a defined compass direction is known to have a significant impact on initial orientation from maritime release sites (Dell'Ariccia et al, 2009a). A good example for a training effect on the initial orientation can be seen at the release site RA2, where the mean vanishing bearing of the hungry birds was 297deg (training direction 303deg) and for the fed pigeons 128deg (training direction 123 deg).…”

Section: Vanishing Bearings Homing Times and Gps Flight Pathsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Avoidance of lakes and other topographic barriers is a well-documented phenomenon (Wagner, 1972;Bonadonna et al, 1997;Dell'Ariccia et al, 2009a). One typical example is a hungry pigeon that was flying south along the border of the lake and changed its course at the shore of the lake, heading towards the food loft until it reached the mountain area.…”

Section: Vanishing Bearings Homing Times and Gps Flight Pathsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Testing cognitive navigation in unknown territories: homing pigeons choose different targets

Blaser

Dell’Omo

Dell’Ariccia

et al. 2013

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYHoming pigeons (Columba livia) are believed to adopt a map-and-compass strategy to find their way home. Surprisingly, to date a clear demonstration of the use of a cognitive map in free-flight experiments is missing. In this study, we investigated whether homing pigeons use a mental map in which -at an unknown release site -their own position, the home loft and a food loft are represented simultaneously. In order to test this, homing pigeons were trained to fly to a 25-30km distant food loft. A total of 131 hungry and satiated pigeons were then released from an unfamiliar site equidistant from the food loft and the home loft. Their vanishing bearings and homing times were assessed conventionally at four sites, and also their flight tracks from one release site by means of GPS loggers. The vanishing bearings of fed and hungry birds differed significantly at all release sites and a highly significant proportion of hungry birds flew to the food loft, while the fed birds headed home. The GPS experiment revealed a number of pigeons flying very precisely to the food loft, others correcting their flight direction after topography-induced detours. This implies that the pigeons knew their geographical position in relation to the targets, and chose a flight direction according to their locally manipulated needs -clearly the essence of a cognitive navigational map. Supplementary material available online at

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The influence of experience in orientation: GPS tracking of homing pigeons released over the sea after directional training

Cited by 8 publications

References 19 publications

Fast and accurate decisions through collective vigilance in fish shoals

Fast and accurate decisions through collective vigilance in fish shoals

Route following and the pigeon's familiar area map

Testing cognitive navigation in unknown territories: homing pigeons choose different targets

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