Behavioral studies of object recognition in pigeons have been conducted for 50 years, yielding a large body of data. Recent work has been directed toward synthesizing this evidence and understanding the visual, associative, and cognitive mechanisms that are involved. The outcome is that pigeons are likely to be the non-primate species for which the computational mechanisms of object recognition...

background: hadjelia truncata is a nematode that causes lesions in the gizzard lining of pigeons, which may even lead to death. the aim of this study was to introduce alphitobius diaperinus as a new intermediate host for hadjelia truncata . methods: h. truncata infection was identified in a pigeon flock in ahvaz city, khuzestan province, iran by performing fecal examination and autopsy. adult a...

Racing pigeons are exposed to and act as carriers of diseases. Dietary protein requirement for their maintenance has not been determined experimentally despite their being domesticated for over 7000 years. A maintenance nitrogen (protein) requirement (MNR) for pigeons was determined in a balance study using diets containing 6, 10 and 14% crude protein (CP). Then, the effects of feeding the diet...

Seed-based pigeon diets could be expected to result in exposure of pigeons to mycotoxins such as deoxynivalenol (DON). Ingestion of low to moderate contamination levels of DON may impair intestinal health, immune function and/or pathogen fitness, resulting in altered host-pathogen interactions and thus different outcome of infections. Here we demonstrate that DON was one of the most frequently ...

Homing pigeons (Columba livia f.d.) are well-known for their homing abilities, and their brains seem to be functionally adapted to homing as exemplified, e.g. by their larger hippocampi and olfactory bulbs. Their hippocampus size is influenced by navigational experience, and, as in other birds, functional specialisation of the left and right hemispheres ('lateralisation') occurs in homing pigeo...

background: it is commonly acknowledged that the most safe and method of choice anesthesia in birds is inhalation anesthesia but in some clinical situations, such as tracheal resection, injectable anesthetic agents are the only choice of surgeons regardless of whether or not an anesthesia machine is available. objectives: this study aimed to compare the quality of anesthesia and recovery time o...

as there is no data available on parasite infection of pigeons (columba livia) in the region, the present study was carried out on domestic pigeons in mashhad city in the north-east of iran. three hundred specimens were examined for the presence of ecto and endoparasites. a total of 300 pigeons, %21.6(n=65) and %15.3(n=46) were infected with nematodes and cestodes respectively whereas no tremat...

Pigeons, unlike rats, do not display very accurate spatial working memory when tested in the traditional radial arm maze apparatus unless they are given special and extended training (cf. Roberts & Van Veldhuizen, 1985). One possible reason for their apparent "unpreparedness" to display spatial memory abilities in radial arm mazes is that, in the wild, pigeons tend to feed in open-field environ...

The potential role of rock pigeons (Columba livia) in the epidemiology of shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) and Salmonella enterica is unclear. Our objective was to determine the prevalence of STEC and S. enterica in pigeons at urban and dairy settings as a function of season. Prevalence of STEC and S. enterica was estimated by bacteriologic culture of cloacal swabs collected from p...

Flying animals must successfully contend with obstacles in their natural environments. Inspired by the robust manoeuvring abilities of flying animals, unmanned aerial systems are being developed and tested to improve flight control through cluttered environments. We previously examined steering strategies that pigeons adopt to fly through an array of vertical obstacles (VOs). Modelling VO fligh...