Geometry and landmark representation by pigeons: evidence for species‐differences in the hemispheric organization of spatial information processing?

Abstract

In this study, we investigated how pigeons (Columba livia) represent environmental geometry and landmark information. Birds learned to locate the centre of a square arena by means of geometric cues alone, or by means of both geometric and landmark cues. By manipulating the type of information available at training and testing, we assessed which cues the birds had encoded, and through the use of monocular occlusion we examined how the information was represented by the two brain hemispheres. Our results show that both brain hemispheres encoded geometric and landmark information. During all viewing conditions, the geometric representation was based mainly on an absolute metric for distance. The relative use of geometry and landmarks was experience dependent. With both brain hemispheres available birds relied, to a greater degree, on geometric information and used it in a more integrated way than with either hemisphere alone. Overall, our findings show a different pattern for the hemispheric encoding of geometric and landmark information by the pigeon than that previously reported for the domestic chick. Our results suggest that the organization of spatial information processing in the left and right brain hemispheres of birds may be more diverse than what is currently known.

Finding the best angle: pigeons (Columba livia) weight angular information more heavily than relative wall length in an open-field geometry task

“…For example, Wilzeck et al (2009) demonstrated that pigeons show a diVerent pattern of geometric encoding than chicks relative to the way the two hemispheres represent information. More investigation is necessary in order to determine whether chicks and pigeons are using similar strategies of spatial information processing but with diVerent hierarchal preferences, or whether the several million years of separate evolutionary paths followed by these two species has led to distinctly diVerent ways of encoding geometric information.…”

“…Recent studies on geometric encoding have signiWcantly expanded our knowledge on how animals encode and use the geometry of their environments in several ways, including the encoding of relative versus absolute metrics (e.g., Tommasi and Vallortigara 2000;Kelly and Spetch 2001;Gray et al 2004;Gray and Spetch 2006;Wilzeck et al 2009) and local versus global cues (e.g., Della Chiesa et al 2006a, b).…”

“…Examining how pigeons compare to chicks in their response to manipulations of local geometry is particularly interesting, given the recent research suggesting the possibility of fundamental diVerences in the ways these two commonly used avian species encode and represent geometry (Wilzeck et al 2009). …”

25 years of research on the use of geometry in spatial reorientation: a current theoretical perspective

“…Even among vertebrate animals, different neurally based models might be necessary. For example, birds show hemispheric specializations in using geometric and nongeometric cues, patterns that differ across species (Vallortigara, Pagni, & Sovrano, 2004;Wilzeck, Prior, & Kelly, 2009). Sheynikhovich et al's model involves learning and could perhaps be applied to models of change over short-term experience, but it has not made any attempt to deal with development over the longer term.…”

Navigating Through an Asymmetrical Brain: Lateralisation and Homing in Pigeon

“…Local searching strategies are often associated with absolute distance encoding from spatial cues in a scene (vector strategy). Pigeons trained to locate a food reward at the centre of an arena tend to focus their searches at approximately the same distance from the walls in an expansion test (Wilzeck et al 2009). Comparable findings have been obtained in an array of freestanding objects of a similar geometric shape (Kelly et al 2008).…”