... of the pigeon (Columba livia). In vivo studies during different flight modes revealed variation in strain profile, activation timing and duration, and contractile cycle frequency of the humerotriceps, suggesting that this muscle may alter wing shape in diverse ways. To examine the multifunction potential...

...Richard Holland; Caterina Filannino; Anna Gagliardo SUMMARY The cues by which homing pigeons are able to return to a home loft after displacement to unfamiliar release sites remain debated. A number of experiments in which migratory birds have been treated with a magnetic pulse have produced...

... cohesion can lead to more accurate outcomes than solitary decisions. In homing pigeons, a classic model in avian orientation studies, individuals learn habitual routes home, but whether and how co-navigating birds acquire and share route-based information is unknown. Using miniature GPS loggers, we...

... of upstroke changes to only provide weight support at higher speeds in bats (Wolf et al., 2010). Our results suggest that birds exhibiting tip-reversal upstroke may use aerodynamic mechanisms similar to bats during slow flight. Our findings indicate that slow-flying pigeons are using their wings...

... required for level flight and the power necessary for potential energy change. Pigeons (Columba livia) were trained to fly at varying angles of ascent and descent (60°, 30°,0°, –30°, –60°), and were recorded using high-speed video. Detailed three-dimensional kinematics were obtained from the recordings...

... ask: what conditions are required at the surface of actively respiring, state III, tightly coupled mitochondria to enhance oxygen flow to cytochrome oxidase? Pigeon heart mitochondria were isolated with minimal damage to the outer mitochondrial membrane and were incubated at low oxygen pressures...

...Anna Gagliardo; Paolo Ioalè; Maria Savini; Hans-Peter Lipp; Giacomo Dell'Omo Experiments have shown that homing pigeons are able to develop navigational abilities even if reared and kept confined in an aviary, provided that they are exposed to natural winds. These and other experiments performed...

...Monique Maurice; Henri Gioanni; Anick Abourachid SUMMARY We investigated the effects of several behavioural conditions on the properties of the horizontal optocollic reflex (OCR) in pigeons. The head reflex was triggered by rotating the visual surroundings at different velocities (stimuli steps...

... ASK) and air temperature (T AIR) independently at air speeds(U WIN) comparable to flying speeds. We used it to measure the influence of T ASK , T AIR and U WIN on plumage and skin temperatures in pigeons having to dissipate a thermal load while constrained at rest in a flight posture. Our results show...

... and across the wings, and for two sites across the tail, of pigeons flying between two perches. The confounding influence of acceleration on the pressure signals is shown to be small for both wings and tail. The mean differential pressure for the tail during steady, level flight was 25.6 Pa, which, given...

...Liisa M. Peltonen; Ahti Pyörnilä SUMMARY We studied the blood flow over dorsal and abdominal, non-brooding patch skin of two groups of pigeons: one group was thermally acclimated to cold(winter-acclimatized, WAC) while the other group was acclimated to a mesic environment (thermally non...

...E. Ophir; Y. Arieli; J. Marder; M. Horowitz SUMMARY The heat-acclimated rock pigeon is thought to use cutaneous water evaporation (CWE) as the `preferred' route for heat dissipation, and this mechanism is controlled by adrenergic signaling. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis...

...Helmut Prior; Frank Lingenauber; Jörg Nitschke; Onur Güntürkün SUMMARY The pigeon's use of different visuo-spatial cues was studied under controlled laboratory conditions that simulated analogous aspects of a homing situation. The birds first learned the route to a goal that was not visible...

...Gilead Michaeli; Berry Pinshow SUMMARY We assessed respiratory and cutaneous water loss in trained tippler pigeons (Columba livia) both at rest and in free flight. In resting pigeons, exhaled air temperature T ex increased with ambient air temperature T a (T ex =16.3+0.705 T a) between 15°C and 30...

... of compass orientation in a cue-controlled arena. Two groups of young homing pigeons received different exposure to the sun. The control group experienced the sun throughout the day; the experimental group experienced only the apparent descent of the sun. After 8 weeks of sun exposure, we trained both groups...

.... pectoralis, have been assigned on the basis of its anatomical position. The mechanical properties, neuromotor pattern during flight and the biochemical properties of the CBP in pigeons (Columba livia) were studied by in situ length/active tension and length/passive tension measurements, in vivo...

...Jonathan T. Hagstrum ABSTRACT Birds can navigate accurately over hundreds to thousands of kilometres, and this ability of homing pigeons is the basis for a worldwide sport. Compass senses orient avian flight, but how birds determine their location in order to select the correct homeward bearing...

...-compass mechanisms are not adjusted to these variations, considerable errors might arise. To learn whether birds are able to take the different rates of sun azimuth change into account, we subjected homing pigeons to a 4 h fast clock-shift. The experiments were performed near Auckland, New Zealand...

...Nikolaus F. Troje; Barrie J. Frost ABSTRACT The head movement of a walking pigeon Columba livia is characterized by two alternating phases, a thrust phase and a hold phase. While the head is rapidly thrust forward during the thrust phase, it has been shown repeatedly that it remains virtually...

...Fransisco Bonadona; Richard Holland; Luigi Dall’Antonia; Tim Guilford; Silvano Benvenuti ABSTRACT Clock-shifted homing pigeons were tracked from familiar sites 17.1 km and 23.5 km from the home loft in Pisa, Italy, using an on-board route recorder. At the first release site, north of home...