CINCINNATI — When the most famous bird in the country died at the Cincinnati Zoo, it was more than the extinction of a species: an American way of life was gone.
Every local schoolkid thinks they know the story of Martha, believed to be the world’s last passenger pigeon: She was born in captivity, then lived with a flock here until her death on Sept. 1, 1914.
Found on the floor of her cage that afternoon, the zoo had her carcass frozen into a 300-pound block of ice, then shipped her to the Smithsonian Institution to be preserved.
“By the time she arrived, the ice I think was pretty much gone,” said Dan Marsh, the zoo’s director of Education and Volunteer Programs. “That’s the best they could do in those days. It can still be pretty hot in September.”
Marsh became the zoo’s in-house expert on passenger pigeons leading up to the 100th anniversary of her death. Martha became one of the Smithsonian’s “most treasured possessions” because of how she’d shape the future of American conservation.
She’s now part of a new exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, chosen from 145 million artifacts and specimens to show how they help scientists understand nature and human culture.
For Martha, the story is much bigger than many people realize.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
BIRDS of a feather not only flock together, but learn together too – according to Oxford University research.
Boffins from the university have discovered that homing pigeons may share the human capacity to learn from others and improve their navigational efficiency over time.
Until now it was thought that being able to pass on and improve knowledge down the generations was something only humans and possibly some other primates could do.
But Takao Sasaki and Dora Biro, who are both research associates in the Department of Zoology, conducted a study testing whether pigeons could improve their flight paths over time.
The pair gave groups of birds a specific navigational task and then replaced birds familiar with the route with inexperienced birds which had never flown the route before.
They found that, over time, the student became the teacher as the pairs’s homing performance consistently improved, with later ‘generation’ groups eventually outperforming birds that flew solo or in groups that never changed membership.
Dr Sasaki said: “At one stage scientists thought that only humans had the cognitive capacity to accumulate knowledge as a society.
“Our study shows that pigeons share these abilities with humans, at least to the extent that they are capable of improving on a behavioural solution progressively over time.”
When humans share and pass knowledge down through generations our culture tends to become more complex over time.
By contrast when homing pigeons do it the end result is an increase in efficiency, in this case navigational.
Dr Biro said: “One key novelty, we think, is that the gradual improvement we see is not due to new ‘ideas’ about how to improve the route being introduced by individual birds.
“Instead, the necessary innovations in each generation come from a form of collective intelligence that arises through pairs of birds having to solve the problem together – in other words through ‘two heads being better than one’.”
The findings of the study are published today in the journal Nature Communications.
Dr Sasaki and Dr Biro now intend to build on the study by investigating if a similar style of knowledge sharing happens in other species’ social groups.
Lots of animal groups have to solve the same problems repeatedly and they may use feedback from past outcomes to help them make better decision in the future.
But Keith Shipperley, assistant secretary of City of Oxford Racing Pigeon Club, said he was sceptical of the findings.
The Headington resident, who has raced pigeons since 1965, said: “It would surprise me greatly. There are not many pairs where one is a winner and they breed a winner.
“You would have a great difficulty convincing me.
“Winners are rare, if you want to buy the babies of a champion pigeon you are talking about £25,000 to £30,000.
“These champion pigeons are few and far between”
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Homing pigeons may share the human capacity to build on the knowledge of others, improving their navigational efficiency over time, a new Oxford University study has found.
The ability to gather, pass on and improve on knowledge over generations is known as cumulative culture. Until now humans and, arguably some other primates, were the only species thought to be capable of it.
Takao Sasaki and Dora Biro, Research Associates in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, conducted a study testing whether homing pigeons can gradually improve their flight paths, over time. They removed and replaced individuals in pairs of birds that were given a specific navigational task. Ten chains of birds were released from the same site and generational succession was simulated with the continuous replacement of birds familiar with the route with inexperienced birds who had never flown the course before. The idea was that these individuals could then pass their experience of the route down to the next pair generation, and also enable the collective intelligence of the group to continuously improve the route’s efficiency.
The findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest that over time, the student does indeed become the teacher. The pairs’ homing performance improved consistently over generations – they streamlined their route to be more direct. Later generation groups eventually outperformed individuals that flew solo or in groups that never changed membership. Homing routes were also found to be more similar in consecutive generations of the same chain of pigeon pairs than across them, showing cross-generational knowledge transfer, or a “culture” of homing routes.
The necessary innovations in each generation come from a form of collective intelligence that arises through pairs of birds having to solve the problem together – in other words through ‘two heads being better than one’.
Dora Biro, Associate Professor of Animal Behaviour at Oxford University
Takao Sasaki, co-author and Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology said: ‘At one stage scientists thought that only humans had the cognitive capacity to accumulate knowledge as a society. Our study shows that pigeons share these abilities with humans, at least to the extent that they are capable of improving on a behavioural solution progressively over time. Nonetheless, we do not claim that they achieve this through the same processes.’
When people share and pass knowledge down through generations, our culture tends to become more complex over time, There are many good examples of this from manufacturing and engineering. By contrast, when the process occurs between homing pigeons, the end result is an increase in the efficiency, (in this case navigational), but not necessarily the complexity, of the behaviour.
Takao Sasaki added: ‘Although they have different processes, our findings demonstrate that pigeons can accumulate knowledge and progressively improve their performance, satisfying the criteria for cumulative culture. Our results further suggest that cumulative culture does not require sophisticated cognitive abilities as previously thought.’
This study shows that collective intelligence, which typically focuses on one-time performance, can emerge from accumulation of knowledge over time.
Moving forward, the team intend to build on the study by investigating if a similar style of knowledge sharing and accumulation occurs in other multi-generational species’ social groups. Many animal groups have to solve the same problems repeatedly in the natural world, and if they use feedback from past outcomes of these tasks or events, this has the potential to influence, and potentially improve, the decisions the groups make in the future.
Dora Biro, co-author and Associate Professor of Animal Behaviour concludes: ‘One key novelty, we think, is that the gradual improvement we see is not due to new ‘ideas’ about how to improve the route being introduced by individual birds. Instead, the necessary innovations in each generation come from a form of collective intelligence that arises through pairs of birds having to solve the problem together – in other words through ‘two heads being better than one’.’
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
In experimental research, scientists tend to assume that — unless they are looking specifically at reproduction or sexual behavior — male and female animals are alike, and mostly use males. But a new study by researchers at the University of California, Davis and the University of New Hampshire, published April 18 in Scientific Reports, shows surprisingly big differences in tissue gene expression between male and female rock doves. The work is part of an attempt to make science more gender-inclusive and aware of physiological and other differences between the sexes.
“There’s a problem of sex and gender inclusion at all levels of science from faculty to the animals we use,” said Rebecca Calisi, assistant professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior at UC Davis and senior author on the paper. “We’re trying to ameliorate that, at least in reproductive biology.”
The problem for experimental science, Calisi said, is that males and females can react very differently to different treatments, even when these don’t seem to be sex-related. For example, drugs as well-known as aspirin have different effects in men and women, and women report a higher rate of adverse reactions to drugs than do men.
Hundreds of Differences in Gene Activity
Calisi and co-author Matthew MacManes at the University of New Hampshire are exploring this problem using the reproductive system of the “rock dove,” or common pigeon, as C. Samuel Craiga model. Scientists back to Charles Darwin have worked with pigeons, and their physiology is well-studied. Like all other vertebrates, the gonads (testes and ovaries) are influenced by hormones produced by the pituitary gland, which itself is controlled by hormones from the hypothalamus, a structure in the brain. Sex hormones produced by the gonads (testosterone and estradiol) in turn feed back to the hypothalamus. This “hypothalamus-pituitary-gonad” axis is found in animals from fish and lizards to birds and people.
Calisi’s team looked at the baseline “transcriptome,” capturing all the genes expressed in the hypothalamus, pituitary and gonads in male and female pigeons when they were not engaged in reproductive behavior. They found hundreds of differences in gene activity between males and females.
“There are incredible differences in gene expression, especially in the pituitary,” Calisi said. The results show that there are far more sex-based differences in the pituitary than previously thought, she said.
The team has created a publicly accessible database for researchers of all the patterns of gene activation that differ between male and female pigeons. The results should generate new leads for investigating male and female reproduction, and encourage researchers to look harder at the effect of sex bias in physiological studies.
Having established baseline genomic data for the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonad axis in the pigeon model, Calisi and MacManes plan to use it to look at the influence of sex on other conditions, such as stress and parental care.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Homing pigeons may share the human capacity to build on the knowledge of others, improving their navigational efficiency over time, a new Oxford University study has found.
The ability to gather, pass on and improve on knowledge over generations is known as cumulative culture. Until now humans and, arguably some other primates, were the only species thought to be capable of it.
Takao Sasaki and Dora Biro, Research Associates in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, conducted a study testing whether homing pigeons can gradually improve their flight paths, over time. They removed and replaced individuals in pairs of birds that were given a specific navigational task. Ten chains of birds were released from the same site and generational succession was simulated with the continuous replacement of birds familiar with the route with inexperienced birds who had never flown the course before. The idea was that these individuals could then pass their experience of the route down to the next pair generation, and also enable the collective intelligence of the group to continuously improve the route’s efficiency.
The findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest that over time, the student does indeed become the teacher. The pairs’ homing performance improved consistently over generations – they streamlined their route to be more direct. Later generation groups eventually outperformed individuals that flew solo or in groups that never changed membership. Homing routes were also found to be more similar in consecutive generations of the same chain of pigeon pairs than across them, showing cross-generational knowledge transfer, or a “culture” of homing routes.
Takao Sasaki, co-author and Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology said: ‘At one stage scientists thought that only humans had the cognitive capacity to accumulate knowledge as a society. Our study shows that pigeons share these abilities with humans, at least to the extent that they are capable of improving on a behavioural solution progressively over time. Nonetheless, we do not claim that they achieve this through the same processes.’
When people share and pass knowledge down through generations, our culture tends to become more complex over time, There are many good examples of this from manufacturing and engineering. By contrast, when the process occurs between homing pigeons, the end result is an increase in the efficiency, (in this case navigational), but not necessarily the complexity, of the behaviour.
Takao Sasaki added: ‘Although they have different processes, our findings demonstrate that pigeons can accumulate knowledge and progressively improve their performance, satisfying the criteria for cumulative culture. Our results further suggest that cumulative culture does not require sophisticated cognitive abilities as previously thought.’
This study shows that collective intelligence, which typically focuses on one-time performance, can emerge from accumulation of knowledge over time.
Dora Biro, co-author and Associate Professor of Animal Behaviour concludes: ‘One key novelty, we think, is that the gradual improvement we see is not due to new ‘ideas’ about how to improve the route being introduced by individual birds. Instead, the necessary innovations in each generation come from a form of collective intelligence that arises through pairs of birds having to solve the problem together – in other words through ‘two heads being better than one’.’
Moving forward, the team intend to build on the study by investigating if a similar style of knowledge sharing and accumulation occurs in other multi-generational species’ social groups. Many animal groups have to solve the same problems repeatedly in the natural world, and if they use feedback from past outcomes of these tasks or events, this has the potential to influence, and potentially improve, the decisions the groups make in the future.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
