Coordinated Behaviour in Pigeon Flocks

PLoS One. 2015 Oct 20;10(10):e0140558. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0140558. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

We analysed pigeon flock flights using GPS trajectory data to reveal the most important kinematic aspects of flocking behaviour. We quantitatively investigated the internal motion of the flock based on pairwise statistics and found the following general relationships in all datasets: i) the temporal order of decisions characterised by the delay between directional changes is strictly related to the spatial order characterised by the longitudinal relative position within the flock; ii) during circling motion, pigeons use a mixture of two idealised and fundamentally different turning strategies, namely, parallel-path and equal-radius type turning. While pigeons tend to maintain their relative position within the flock on average, as in the parallel-path approximation, those who turn later also get behind as in the equal-radius case. Equal-radius type turning also tends to be expressed more during smaller radius turns.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Behavior, Animal / physiology*
  • Biomechanical Phenomena / physiology
  • Columbidae / physiology*
  • Flight, Animal / physiology*
  • Models, Biological

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the JST PRESTO program and the FI program of Osaka Prefecture University. This work was also partially supported by the European Union and the European Social Fund through project FuturICT.hu (grant no.: TÁMOP-4.2.2.C-11/1/KONV-2012-0013). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.