Pigeons trade efficiency for stability in response to level of challenge during confined flight

TL;DR

This study investigates how pigeons choose between efficiency and stability in flight strategies when navigating obstacles of varying difficulty, revealing adaptive decision-making in response to challenge levels.

Contribution

It demonstrates that pigeons adapt their flight strategies based on obstacle difficulty, balancing efficiency and stability during confined flight.

Findings

Pigeons switch to more stable, less efficient strategies with increased obstacle difficulty.

Stable flight strategies are preferred when collision risk is higher.

Pigeons assess obstacle challenge and adjust their locomotor patterns accordingly.

Abstract

Individuals traversing challenging obstacles are faced with a decision: they can adopt traversal strategies that minimally disrupt their normal locomotion patterns or they can adopt strategies that substantially alter their gait, conferring new advantages and disadvantages. We flew pigeons (Columba livia) through an array of vertical obstacles in a flight arena, presenting them with this choice. The pigeons selected either a strategy involving only a slight pause in the normal wingbeat cycle, or a wings folded posture granting reduced efficiency but greater stability should a misjudgment lead to collision. The more stable but less efficient flight strategy was not employed to traverse easy obstacles with wide gaps for passage, but came to dominate the postures used as obstacle challenge increased with narrower gaps and there was a greater chance of a collision. These results indicate that birds weigh potential obstacle negotiation strategies and estimate task difficulty during locomotor pattern selection.