By place an eye patch on home pigeons , researchers reassert that vision plays a major character in the birds ’ notice abilities to happen home . But while these one - eyed pigeons still relied on visual modality to fell homewards from familiar locations , they could n’t reduplicate that same road if the patch was switch to the other eye . The findings , published inProceedings of the Royal Society Bthis week , show that their visual input is asymmetric .
The homing route of pigeon ( Columba livia ) from familiar release points are idiosyncratic and tightly recapitulated on later flight of stairs – suggesting that eruditeness plays a part in establish route . But how they find their way home base has been debated for years . Previous work have looked at olfactory cue , sun and magnetic compasses , and the function of long , linear landmark such as roads , railway lines , and rivers . However , the visual system of pigeons is different than that of mammals : The left and veracious halves of shuttle brains are think to act more autonomously than ours since they do n’t have a anatomical structure call the corpus callosum , where we pass information between brain hemisphere . alternatively , their ocular tract share remark from each optic unsymmetrically to the brain hemisphere . So how does information from each eye chip in to route institution ?
Each pigeon was match with two centre ring . The hook side of the Velcro was seize to the feathers to verify forward vision would n’t be compromised . The eye caps were construct of a twofold layer of flexible incised credit card . A. Martinho et al . , Proc . R. Soc . vitamin B complex 2015
Oxford University ’s Antone Martinhoand fellow wanted to see if this left - right field autonomy affected homing behaviors . They attach GPS lumberjack to 12 pigeons , placed an centre patch on one of their eyes , and then trained them to fly home for 18 flight before flying another 18 flights from the same dismission point but with the opposite oculus block . This was then followed by five flight with the original oculus blocked and five flight with normal ( two - eyed , or binocular ) vision .
The routes learn solely with one oculus were not recapitulate when flying with the other . The two groups of birds – trained first with the odd eye or first with the right – form new routes after flip-flop eye . That means their mind hemispheres learn and act severally to some extent . Interestingly , pigeon that flee first with the left eye formed newfangled itinerary that were closer to their original paths .
