Pigeons sniff their way home with right nostril

Pigeons can find their way home from hundreds of miles - an ability that fascinates scientists and has led to their use in carrying messages and even smuggling drugs.
Now, researchers in Italy, say they have shown how much the birds rely on one of their nostrils to "sniff" their way around.

The team report in the Journal of Experimental Biology, that pigeons with a blocked right nostril were unable to create the "map of smells" that guides them on their journey.
Homing pigeons are the domesticated relatives of wild rock doves , which have an innate ability to find their way back to their own nest over long distances.
More on "pesky pigeons" from BBC Wildlife Finder
Read the paper in Journal of Experimental Biology
The domestic birds are bred to fine-tune this capability, to help them find the loft they are raised in.

Previous attempts to unpick this remarkable navigational skill, by this team as well as other researchers, revealed that as the birds sit in their lofts they learn the directions from which odours originate.
The birds appear to construct a mental map of these odours; a map that is sufficiently accurate to guide them in the direction of home until they spot local landmarks.

Blocked nose

To investigate this further, the scientists plugged either the left or the right nostril of homing pigeons raised just outside Pisa.

They released the birds from Cigoli, 40km away, and followed the birds' return routes using GPS trackers.

Analysing the flight paths of the birds, Dr Gagliardo and her colleagues could see that pigeons that could not breathe through the right nostril took a more tortuous routes.

The birds also stopped more often than birds that had only their left nostrils blocked and took far longer to find their way home.

Other research has shown that pigeons are able to "sense" the Earth's magnetic field; giving them an internal compass that helps guide them.

But Dr Gagliardo says that odours are vital cues that allow them to "understand where they are with respect to home".

She told BBC News that odours sniffed through the pigeons' right nostrils seem to help the birds construct their "navigational map".

IS IT APRIL 1ST RENE

yes mate just come early

i watched a program about 2 years ago on tv where they raised a kit of young birds on a floating loft, they trained the birds to the loft from variouse locations,and then they started to move the loft down river,the birds still found there way to the loft.
after watching this i do believe that the pigeons use all tha 3 things to find there way home, the earths magnetic field .landmarks and smell.

just my opinion.

alan harrison wrote:

i watched a program about 2 years ago on tv where they raised a kit of young birds on a floating loft, they trained the birds to the loft from variouse locations,and then they started to move the loft down river,the birds still found there way to the loft.
after watching this i do believe that the pigeons use all tha 3 things to find there way home, the earths magnetic field .landmarks and smell.

just my opinion.

saw this programme to mate and i think we will never know how they work there way home

the one i think of is how the birds during the war would find the movement of lofts as they were on wheels but always found there way home

fletch wrote:

the one i think of is how the birds during the war would find the movement of lofts as they were on wheels but always found there way home

truely amazeing these birds of ours.

alan harrison wrote:

fletch wrote:

the one i think of is how the birds during the war would find the movement of lofts as they were on wheels but always found there way home

truely amazeing these birds of ours.

deffinatley mate dont think we will ever know how they get home

fletch wrote:

alan harrison wrote:

fletch wrote:

the one i think of is how the birds during the war would find the movement of lofts as they were on wheels but always found there way home

truely amazeing these birds of ours.

deffinatley mate dont think we will ever know how they get home

agree