Seeking social proximity improves flight routes among pigeons

Press release issued: 6 June 2024

A new University of Bristol-led study looked at the social influences on pigeon flight routes. Researchers compared the flight patterns of pairs of pigeons to a computer model and found that flight paths are improved as younger birds learn the route from older birds and also make route improvements, leading to overall more efficient routes over generations. The study is published in PLOS Biology.

In collaboration with international colleagues, the scientists spent years observing the behaviour of juvenile male Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia, and using long-term behavioural and genetic data from this population, they investigated the role of juvenile social play in developing adult male reproductive behaviour.

Lead author Dr Katy Holmes, who completed this work as part of her doctoral research at the University of Western Australia, said: “We found that juvenile play involves immature versions of adult reproductive behaviours that are crucial for males to access and mate with estrous females, and the time spent doing these play behaviours predicts how many offspring males eventually sire as adults.”

Read the full University of Bristol news story

Paper: ‘Juvenile social play predicts adult reproductive success in male bottlenose dolphins’ Kathryn G. Holmes, Michael Krützen, Amanda R. Ridley, Simon J. Allen, Richard C. Connor, Livia Gerber, Cindy Flaherty Stamm and Stephanie L. King in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences