Pigeon Navigation: Charcoal Filter Removes Relevant Information From Environmental Air

Homing pigeons were displaced and kept until they were released in airtight containers ventilated with environmental air that could be passed through: (a) a filter made of fiberglass paper retaining large portions of the solid and liquid aerosol particles, (b) an additional filter consisting of activated charcoal, or (c) no filter (controls). Before its release, each bird was taken out of the container, and its olfactory epithelium was immediately anesthetized by lidocaine (Xylocaine). Thus, neither experimentals nor controls were able to smell while their initial orientation behavior was being observed. The controls' initial bearings were better homeward-oriented than those of pigeons ventilated with charcoal-filtered air in 14 of 17 releases conducted in Italy and Germany, at distances of 24-155 km. In the final analysis, the bearings of the charcoal-filter birds did not show any relation to the direction toward home, whereas those of the controls did. Pigeons ventilated with air that had passed through only the paper filter did not behave noticeably differently from control pigeons. It is concluded that the material bases of olfactory navigation in pigeons are substances dispersed in the atmosphere, most probably in a molecular state. © 1981 Springer-Verlag.