- "It really has knocked our research team sideways
to find that after a decade-long international study, pigeons appear to
ignore their inbuilt directional instincts and follow the road system."
-
-
- Researchers have cracked the puzzle of how pigeons find
their way home: they just follow the main roads.
-
- Zoologists now believe the phrase "as the crow flies"
no longer means the shortest most direct route between two points. They
say it is likely that crows and other diurnal birds also choose AA-suggested
routes, even though it makes their journeys longer.
-
- Some pigeons stick so rigidly to the roads that they
even fly round roundabouts before choosing the exit to lead them back to
their lofts.
-
- Animal behaviouralists at Oxford University are stunned
by their findings, which follow 10 years of research into homing pigeons.
For the last 18 months they have used the latest global-positioning technology,
allowing them to track the ground the birds covered to within one to four
metres.
-
- "It really has knocked our research team sideways
to find that after a decade-long international study, pigeons appear to
ignore their inbuilt directional instincts and follow the road system,"
said Prof Tim Guilford, reader in animal behaviour at Oxford University's
Department of Zoology.
-
- "For long-distance navigation and for birds doing
a journey for the first time, they will use their inbuilt compasses and
take sun and star bearings.
-
- "But once homing pigeons have flown a journey more
than once, they home in on a habitual route home, much as we do when we
are driving or walking home from work.
-
- "In short, it looks like it is mentally easier for
a bird to fly down a road and then turn right. They are just making their
journey as simple as possible".
-
- His team carried out dozens of tests with pigeons in
Oxfordshire, releasing them between 10 and 20 miles from their lofts, each
with a tiny GPS tracking device attached to their backs. Matching their
routes, they found most flew straight down the A34 Oxford bypass.
-
- "It was almost comical watching one group of birds
that we released near a major A road. They followed the road to the first
junction where they all turned right, and a couple of junctions on, they
all turned left".
-
- Not all of the pigeons did it all of the time, but there
were enough occasions when they did for the researchers to build up a pattern.
-
- "We even had one bird flying down the road, going
round the roundabout, taking one of the turnings down that to another roundabout
then leaving the road.
-
- "Up until now, we have always thought about the
way that birds go in terms of the energetics of the flight efficiency,
which is the most direct route home ... as in the phrase 'as the crow flies'.
-
- "But the answer is, they don't go as the crow flies,
and neither, it is my hunch, do crows. As they get familiar with the environment,
they just follow the obvious features which often don't take them directly
home.
-
- "That may sound trivial to some people, but to us
that is quite important because it is starting to get at the structure
of a birds' memories, and what the map looks like to a bird.
-
- "We are genuinely surprised. It makes you think
what did pigeons and other birds do before we cluttered the landscape with
all these linear features. And it makes you think hard about how flexible
animals are amid what we have done to their landscape.
-
- "Lots of animals have invaded and made use of the
changes we have provided for them. You only have to look at Trafalgar Square
and how it has become a fantastic three-dimensional cliff environment for
pigeons to live in. It's evolution in action.
-
- "Maybe they were using rivers and coastlines before.
But when we got our first tracks of birds flying up the dual carriageway
and then turning off the road to the village where their home loft was,
we thought, 'This shouldn't happen, but it's very exciting'.
-
- "Roads and important things like roundabouts do
appear to be very attractive to birds. If they have made the journey before,
the pigeons are more likely to say, 'Well, I know this is south - the way
I want to be going - but rather than fiddle around with my inbuilt compass
I'm going to follow the A34, which will take me home nicely'."
-
- Peter Brian, general manager of the Royal Pigeon Racing
Association, based in Cheltenham, said: "Every Saturday you can see
whole flocks of pigeons flying up the M5. Prof Guilford's research in animal
behaviour and migration is renowned and there is a lot of credence to what
he is saying. I think his findings are spot-on".
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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