Human gambling generally involves suboptimal choice because the expected return is usually less than the investment. We have found that animals, too, choose suboptimally under similar choice conditions. Pigeons, like human gamblers, show an impaired ability to objectively assess overall probabilities and amounts of reinforcement when a rare, highvalue outcome (analogous to a jackpot in human ga...

Pigeons and humans were trained to discriminate between pictures of three-dimensional objects that differed in global shape. Each pair of objects was shown at two orientations that differed by a depth rotation of 90 degrees during training. Pictures of the objects at novel depth rotations were then tested for recognition. The novel test rotations were 30 degrees, 45 degrees, and 90 degrees from...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Chlamydophila psittaci is a lethal bacterium that causes endemic avian chlamydiosis, and respiratory psittacosis. Laboratory diagnosis of Chlamydophila psittaci is difficult by culture. This study was design to investigate the presence of Chlamydophila psittaci in collected pharyngeal swabs from asyptomatic pigeons by PCR. MATERIALS AND METHODS Pharyngeal samples from...

Fatalities among avian species due to multiple bee stings are rare. Sixteen pigeons on a farm in Bangladesh each suffered multiple bee stings. Ten of the pigeons died before treatment, 5 (4-11 stings) died within 12 hr after treatment, and 1 pigeon (only 3 stings) survived. Body temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, hematocrit, hemoglobin, erythrocytes, thrombocytes, MCV, MCH and MCHC decr...

Two breeds of pigeons (White Carneau and Silver King) have been found to have a high incidence of spontaneous atheromatous lesions in the aorta, while two breeds of homing pigeons (Racing Homers and Show Racers) seemed to be resistant to atherosclerosis. The weight of the aorta, and its cholesterol content, paralleled the severity of the disease. The levels of serum cholesterol and phospholipid...

This study brings together work in pattern recognition and animal behaviour. By applying algorithms in pattern recognition, we examined how visual landscape information influences pigeons' homing behaviour. We used an automated procedure (Canny edge detector) to extract edges from an aerial image of the experimental terrain. Analysis of pigeons' homing routes recorded using global positioning s...

A total of 244 domestic pigeons (Columba livia var. domestica) were genotyped using the PCR-RFLP method. A 999 bp fragment of the MTCYB gene was amplified. The amplification products were digested with restriction enzymes. PCR-RFLP for MvaI restriction enzyme was observed. Frequencies of alleles were as follows: MTCYB(C)--0.926, MTCYB(G)-- 0.074. The frequencies of MTCYB/MvaI alleles found in t...