How Lovebirds Maneuver Rapidly Using Super-Fast Head Saccades and Image Feature Stabilization.

ABSTRACT: Diurnal flying animals such as birds depend primarily on vision to coordinate their flight path during goal-directed flight tasks. To extract the spatial structure of the surrounding environment, birds are thought to use retinal image motion (optical flow) that is primarily induced by motion of their head. It is unclear what gaze behaviors birds perform to support visuomotor control during rapid maneuvering flight in which they continuously switch between flight modes. To analyze this, we measured the gaze behavior of rapidly turning lovebirds in a goal-directed task: take-off and fly away from a perch, turn on a dime, and fly back and land on the same perch. High-speed flight recordings revealed that rapidly turning lovebirds perform a remarkable stereotypical gaze behavior with peak sacc

SUBMITTER: Kress D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4481315 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature