Choosing
the right direction depends on who you are with. If you have a guide, you
follow, no question – you are probably paying for the service so why would you
take off on your own. If travelling with your partner, things may be different
and arguments may be vivid. But these are special situations, What happens when
in an informal group?
Many
social species wander around following somebody, but does that someone know
where they are going? Among the dreamy spires of Oxford, Flack et al decided to
see if homing pigeons were too bird-brained to take good advice and follow a
more experienced bird.
They
decided that the birds should work in pairs and that the experience of the two
in each pair should be different. After loading them up with GPS tracking
equipment, they tossed the pairs out at locations far from home.
What they
found was that the bird who had more navigational time under its feathers chose
the route. This was most marked when the difference in navigational time served
was the greatest.
Clearly
the best decisions were made, but it still isn’t clear how the issues were
decided as they climbed into the sky and made a quick circuit before flapping
off home for tea. But decided they were, and no one had to stop and ask
directions, or fly around while the other consulted a map.
It is
interesting that here experience and not social dominance decided the issue. Maybe
we have a lot to learn from homing pigeons.
- A. Flack,B. Pettit, R. freeman, T. Guilford and D. Biro, J. Animal Behaviour, DOI.org/10.1016.janbehav.2011.12.018
