...Anna Gagliardo; Enrica Pollonara; Martin Wikelski ABSTRACT The role of environmental olfactory information in pigeon navigation has been extensively studied by analysing vanishing bearing distributions and homing performances of homing pigeons subjected to manipulation of their olfactory perception...

...Cordula V. Mora; Merissa L. Acerbi; Verner P. Bingman It has been well established that homing pigeons are able to use the Earth's magnetic field to obtain directional information when returning to their loft and that their magnetic compass is based, at least in part, on the perception of magnetic...

...Cordula V. Mora; Jeremy D. Ross; Peter V. Gorsevski; Budhaditya Chowdhury; Verner P. Bingman SUMMARY Considerable efforts have been made to investigate how homing pigeons ( Columba livia f. domestica ) are able to return to their loft from distant, unfamiliar sites while the mechanisms underlying...

... compared the homing performances of homing pigeons that fly singly and in groups of three. Our findings show that although small groups were either governed (i.e. when individuals in the flock had age differences) or not (i.e. when individuals in the flock had the same age) by leaders, with concern...

... of the right nostril has also been demonstrated in humans, particularly in evaluating odour intensity ( Thuerauf et al., 2008 ) and in olfactory detection and discrimination ( Kobal et al., 2000 ; Zatorre and Jones-Gotman, 1990 ). According to anatomical studies on homing pigeons, the olfactory bulbs...

...Julia Mehlhorn; Burkhard Haastert; Gerd Rehkämper SUMMARY Homing pigeons ( Columba livia f.d.) are well-known for their homing abilities, and their brains seem to be functionally adapted to homing as exemplified, e.g. by their larger hippocampi and olfactory bulbs. Their hippocampus size...

... output. * Author for correspondence( [email protected] ) 14 7 2009 2009 Columba livia GPS tracking homing pigeon motivation initial orientation The homing pigeon ( Columba livia Gmelin 1789) has been intensively used as a model species to study orientation...

...Gaia Dell'Ariccia; Giacomo Dell'Omo; Hans-Peter Lipp SUMMARY Flight experience is one of the factors that influences initial orientation of displaced homing pigeons ( Columba livia ). Prior studies showed a systematic dependence of initial orientation on previously flown direction. Using GPS data...

...Anna Gagliardo; Paolo Ioalè; Maria Savini; Martin Wild SUMMARY Anatomical evidence and conditioning experiments have recently suggested that magnetoreceptors are located in the upper beak of homing pigeons, where they are innervated by the ophthalmic branch of the trigeminal nerve. These findings...

... olfactory guidance homing pigeon Despite strong evidence that olfactory cues or an intact olfactory system are necessary for pigeons to find their way home from unfamiliar sites( Papi, 1991 ; Wallraff, 2004 ; Wallraff, 2005 ), an olfactory explanation of pigeon homing has failed to win universal...

...Anna Gagliardo; Francesca Odetti; Paolo Ioalè SUMMARY To orient from familiar sites, homing pigeons can rely on both an olfactory map and visual familiar landmarks. The latter can in principle be used in two different ways: either within a topographical map exploited for piloting or in a so-called...

...Richard A. Holland SUMMARY 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...

...Dora Biro; Tim Guilford; Giacomo Dell'Omo; Hans-Peter Lipp SUMMARY Providing homing pigeons with a 5 min preview of the landscape at familiar sites prior to release reliably improves the birds' subsequent homing speeds. This phenomenon has been taken to suggest that the visual panorama is involved...

... direction. When released at a distant site, homing pigeons (Columba livia) raised in deflector lofts exhibit a shift in orientation relative to controls which corresponds to the clockwise or counterclockwise rotation of winds in their loft, suggesting the involvement of wind-borne olfactory cues in pigeon...

... ; Papi & Pardi, 1978). All these techniques require that the bird and the monitoring equipment always be within optical or electromagnetic ‘visibility’. 05 08 1987 © 1988 by Company of Biologists 1988 flight path recording heading sensor Aves homing pigeon...