Pigeons fly home with a map in their heads

(University of Zurich, July 25, 2013)

A doctoral student at the University of Zurich has carried out experiments explaining how homing pigeons navigate. For the experiment, the pigeons were fed every day in a loft 30 km away from their home loft and had to fly home after being fed. Then, the scientist brought the pigeons, equipped with a GPS tracker, to a third place unknown to them. Half of the pigeons were allowed to eat as much as they wanted before flying home, the other half was sent out hungry. While the satiated pigeons flew to their home loft, the hungry pigeons chose to fly to the feeding loft. Based on this procedure, the researchers concludes that pigeons have a type of cognitive navigational map in their heads and have cognitive capabilities to determine their location choose between several targets.