- Pigeons have taken the easy route home and followed major
roads and other human thoroughfares for thousands of years, researchers
claim.
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- The study, published yesterday by a Swiss team, provides
"statistical proof" that the carrier pigeon's uncanny ability
to find its home coop depends a great deal on trunk routes, suggesting
that the birds have probably relied on human directions as long as people
have been changing the landscape.
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- The study of birds released from sites around Rome to
their loft in Testa di Lepre, 12 miles west of the city, showed that the
pigeons do not travel as "the crow flies".
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- They followed SS Aurelia, Italy's old coastal highway,
and preferred this route to a greater extent than the newer and larger
highway A12, or the railway.
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- The SS Aurelia traces the ancient imperial Via Aurelia,
which was begun in 241 BC and connected Rome to what is now southern France,
providing a hint that the birds have relied on human directions for more
than two millennia.
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- Pigeons may well have always used rivers and coastlines
to navigate, even before the road network was created, because they evolved
from rock doves, coastal birds that are known to use coastlines.
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- Yesterday, in the journal Current Biology, the University
of Zurich group headed by Prof Hans-Peter Lipp reports what it believes
is the best evidence yet of pigeons following roads.
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- "The question of road following has for the first
time been addressed experimentally in a way permitting statistical proof
that it contributes significantly to the ability of pigeons to fly home
rapidly and safely," said Prof Lipp's colleague, Dr David Wolfer.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004
- /07/27/wpige27.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/27/ixworld.html
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