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

Pigeons were trained to locate food in two geometrically equivalent corners of a parallelogram-shaped enclosure. Both the angular amplitude of the corners and the length of the walls alone were sufficient for successfully completing the task. Following training, birds were tested in three separate conditions that manipulated the geometric information available. During tests in both a rectangular-shaped enclosure that preserved the wall length information but not the angular amplitude, and a rhombus-shaped enclosure that did the opposite, pigeons located their goal corners with a high degree of accuracy, indicating an ability to use both types of geometric information in isolation. This result is consistent with prior research with domestic chicks. However, in a conflict test in a reverse parallelogram-shaped enclosure, in which the correct angular location was paired with an incorrect wall length location, birds showed a preference for the correct angular location. This suggests that pigeons weight angles more heavily than wall lengths in this type of navigation task, which differs from findings in a similar task conducted with the domestic chick. Results in the conflict test also suggest that pigeons did not use the principal axis as their main strategy of small-scale navigation.