Comments on: The Pigeon Triumvirate http://indessed.com/roscivs/2007/03/17/the-pigeon-triumvirate/ a little poison now and then, that makes for pleasant dreams Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:35:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 By: roscivs http://indessed.com/roscivs/2007/03/17/the-pigeon-triumvirate/#comment-19 roscivs Sun, 18 Mar 2007 16:07:23 +0000 http://indessed.com/blog/2007/03/17/the-pigeon-triumvirate/#comment-19 Wikipedia claims that, "Charles Walcott at Cornell was able to demonstrate that one strain of pigeons was confused by a magnetic anomaly in the Earth that had no effect on another strain of birds." Do you know any details about this particular research? I wonder if the "strain of birds" that the magnetic anomaly had no affect on was a strain of homing pigeons or not. It kind of makes a big difference as to whether his research supports magnetosensation as a general solution to the homing pigeon problem! Wikipedia claims that, “Charles Walcott at Cornell was able to demonstrate that one strain of pigeons was confused by a magnetic anomaly in the Earth that had no effect on another strain of birds.” Do you know any details about this particular research? I wonder if the “strain of birds” that the magnetic anomaly had no affect on was a strain of homing pigeons or not. It kind of makes a big difference as to whether his research supports magnetosensation as a general solution to the homing pigeon problem!

]]> By: Nathan http://indessed.com/roscivs/2007/03/17/the-pigeon-triumvirate/#comment-18 Nathan Sat, 17 Mar 2007 21:01:42 +0000 http://indessed.com/blog/2007/03/17/the-pigeon-triumvirate/#comment-18 We actually did a presentation in my Behavioral Neuroscience class on how to study magnetosensation in pigeons. It was kinda cool. Magnetosensation is slowly winning out over the other theories for how homing pigeons home; it ain't landmarks, and atmospheric odors are falling out of favor too. Unfortunately, because humans don't magnetosense (at least, not in any useful way), the NIH doesn't fund research like this, and so the question of how the homing pigeon gets home remains largely unexplored. We actually did a presentation in my Behavioral Neuroscience class on how to study magnetosensation in pigeons. It was kinda cool.

Magnetosensation is slowly winning out over the other theories for how homing pigeons home; it ain’t landmarks, and atmospheric odors are falling out of favor too. Unfortunately, because humans don’t magnetosense (at least, not in any useful way), the NIH doesn’t fund research like this, and so the question of how the homing pigeon gets home remains largely unexplored.

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