Psychology Commons^™

Evidence For Discrete Landmark Use By Pigeons During Homing, Cordula V. Mora, Jeremy D. Ross, Peter V. Gorsevski, Budhaditya Chowdhury, Verner P. Bingman

Cordula Mora

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 navigation in familiar territory have received less attention. With the recent advent of global positioning system (GPS) data loggers small enough to be carried by pigeons, the role of visual environmental features in guiding navigation over familiar areas is beginning to be understood, yet, surprisingly, we still know very little about whether homing pigeons can rely on discrete, visual landmarks to guide navigation. To assess a possible role of discrete, visual …