A young homing pigeon must learn quickly how to find its way home from the strange neighborhoods where humans insist on leaving it. At first the bird does this by relying on its crudest instincts, returning to its roost along a route full of youthful zigzags. Over time, though, it refines its methods. A mature pigeon takes a much simpler route, because it has drawn itself a more complex map.
Homing pigeons have been subjected to all kinds of research. The latest study used GPS devices, which the birds carried in little Teflon backpacks. Ingo Schiffner of the Queensland Brain Institute and Roswitha Wiltschko of Goethe-Universität Frankfurt studied pigeons at three different ages: juveniles (6 to 7 months old), yearlings (the same pigeons in their second year of life, after going through a training program), and older trained birds (at least two years of age).
Wearing their tracking harnesses, the ...
