The orientation of homing pigeons (Columba livia f.d.) with and without navigational experience in a two-dimensional environment.

ABSTRACT: Homing pigeons are known for their excellent homing ability, and their brains seem to be functionally adapted to homing. It is known that pigeons with navigational experience show a larger hippocampus and also a more lateralised brain than pigeons without navigational experience. So we hypothesized that experience may have an influence also on orientation ability. We examined two groups of pigeons (11 with navigational experience and 17 without) in a standard operant chamber with a touch screen monitor showing a 2-D schematic of a rectangular environment (as "geometric" information) and one uniquely shaped and colored feature in each corner (as "landmark" information). Pigeons were trained first for pecking on one of these features and then we examined their ability to encode geometric and

SUBMITTER: Mehlhorn J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5703563 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature