The orientational salience of visual cues to the homing pigeon

Chappell, Jackie; Guilford, Tim

doi:10.1006/anbe.1996.0402

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…These tests revealed that pigeons were able to transfer accurately between two-dimensional panels and three-dimensional landmarks and vice versa. This transfer, together with the lack of consistent differences between birds trained with landmarks and birds trained with panels, appears to contrast with results by Chappell and Guilford (1997). They found that pigeons were unable to accurately locate a goal using two-dimensional cues affixed to the walls of an enclosure but that they were able to locate the goal using a three-dimensional landmark placed on the floor of the enclosure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 76%

“…However, their panels were located on walls on either side of the goal rather than directly behind the goal. An interesting future experiment would be to directly compare control by panels on the side walls (as in Chappel and Guilford) with control by a panel placed in the corner behind the goal (as in our experiment).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For half of these subjects, the features consisted of three-dimensional landmarks; for the other half of the subjects, the features were flat panels affixed to the corners of the apparatus. We expected that the landmark objects would be more salient because Chappell and Guilford (1997) found that pigeons were unable to locate a target using two-dimensional panels on the walls of an octagonal enclosure but were able to locate it using a threedimensional landmark. Third, our experiment included a larger number of transformation tests than in previous studies, thereby providing a more comprehensive investigation of responses to tests that pitted geometry against featural information.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Pigeons' (Columba livia) encoding of geometric and featural properties of a spatial environment.

Kelly¹,

Spetch²,

Heth³

1998

Journal of Comparative Psychology

237

208

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Pigeons (Columba livia) searched for hidden food in a rectangular environment constructed to eliminate external orientation cues. A feature group was initially trained with distinct features in each corner. A geometric group was initially trained with no featural information. Tests revealed that both groups encoded the geometry of the apparatus. The geometric group was then retrained with features, and a series of tests was administered to both groups. Transformation tests revealed that the groups differed in reliance on features versus geometry. Pigeons in the feature group followed the positive feature even when it was placed in a geometrically incorrect corner, whereas pigeons in the geometric group showed shared control by features and geometry. Both groups were able to use features in corners distant to the goal to orient themselves, and both groups relied more on the color than on the shape of the features. Survival within an environment frequently requires efficient processing of spatial information. Spatial abilities underlie activities that are critical for the individual (e.g., establishment of lodging, avoidance of predation, and attainment of nourishment) and for a species (e.g., migratory behavior or reproduction); these activities may involve a variety of mechanisms. Navigation, for example, may be achieved through inertial guidance, orientation to a beacon, piloting by use of landmarks, or developing a spatial representation of the environment (Gallistel, 1990). Questions concerning which aspects of an environment are encoded and used in navigation have been addressed in recent research (for reviews, see Cheng & Spetch, 1998; Gallistel, 1990; and Poucet, 1993). Many studies have shown that animals can encode and use multiple sources of information to locate a goal (e.g., Spetch & Edwards, 1988) and that the primacy of control by different sources of information may differ according to context (e.g., Strasser & Bingman, 1996) or species (e.g., Brodbeck, 1994). One particularly interesting set of results has emerged from studies that have controlled and manipulated the information available for encoding by restricting access to navigational cues in an enclosed environment and by disrupting other positional cues through disorientation techniques (Cheng,

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Pigeons' (Columba livia) encoding of geometric and featural properties of a spatial environment.

Kelly¹,

Spetch²,

Heth³

1998

Journal of Comparative Psychology

237

208

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This is, in fact, a closer analogy to the natural behaviour of taking off after ground foraging than most homing releases, where the bird is removed from a box with no view of the landscape and tossed into the air immediately. It has been suggested that the use of horizon features would result in a mosaic map type representation of landmarks involving a compass (Chappell and Guilford, 1997) but, for obvious reasons, it is difficult to know what a pigeon needs to be able to bring into focus in order to navigate by it. A wood might be a blur, for example, but it would still be distinguishable from a corn field or a range of hills.…”

Section: Direct Evidence For the Use Of Visual Landmarks By Homingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of visual landmarks in the avian familiar area map

Holland

2003

Journal of Experimental Biology

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The question of whether homing pigeons use visual landmarks for orientation from distant, familiar sites is an unresolved issue in the field of avian navigation. Where evidence has been found, the question still remains as to whether the landmarks are used independent of the map and compass mechanism for orientation that is so important to birds. Recent research has challenged the extent to which experiments that do not directly manipulate the visual sense can be used as evidence for compass-independent orientation. However, it is proposed that extending a new technique for research on vision in homing to include manipulation of the compasses used by birds might be able to resolve this issue. The effect of the structure of the visual sense of the homing pigeon on its use of visual landmarks is also considered.

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“…The sun compass may also be only partially time-compensated, and this has been discussed in the literature by several authors [1,5,11]. Partial compensation has been seen in several groups (sandhoppers [12], honeybees [13] and pigeons [14–16]). For example, desert ants underestimate the rate of movement of the sun's azimuth when it is high and overestimate this rate of movement when it is low [17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The efficiency of varying methods and degrees of time compensation for the solar azimuth

Massy,

Wotton

2023

Biol. Lett.

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Daytime migrants are known to orientate using the position of the sun, compensating for its changing position throughout the day with a ‘time-compensated sun compass'. This compass has been demonstrated in many migratory species, with various degrees of accuracy for the actual movement of the sun. Here, we present a model for differing levels of compensation for the solar ephemeris that shows that a high degree of efficiency, in terms of distance travelled, can be achieved without full time compensation. In our model, compensating for the sun's position had a diminishing return with an accuracy of 80% leading to only a 2% reduction in distance travelled. We compare various modes of time compensation—full, partial, time averaged and step—revealing their directional efficiency in terms of distance travelled under an autumn migration scenario. We find that the benefit of time compensation varies with latitude, with time averaging performing very well, especially at all high latitudes, but step compensation performing better at very low latitudes. Importantly, even rudimentary adjustment can dramatically increase the efficiency of migration, which suggests an easy pathway for the independent evolution of time compensation.

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The orientational salience of visual cues to the homing pigeon

Cited by 9 publications

References 22 publications

Pigeons' (Columba livia) encoding of geometric and featural properties of a spatial environment.

Pigeons' (Columba livia) encoding of geometric and featural properties of a spatial environment.

The role of visual landmarks in the avian familiar area map

The efficiency of varying methods and degrees of time compensation for the solar azimuth

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