Pigeons encode relative geometry
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 3, 2026

Recording Single Neurons' Action Potentials from Freely Moving Pigeons Across Three Stages of Learning
Published on: June 2, 2014
1Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6G 2E9. kelly@bio.psy.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
Abstract:
Pigeons were trained to search for hidden food in a rectangular environment designed to eliminate any external cues. Following training, the authors administered unreinforced test trials in which the geometric properties of the apparatus were manipulated. During tests that preserved the relative geometry but altered the absolute geometry of the environment, the pigeons continued to choose the geometrically correct corners, indicating that they encoded the relative geometry of the enclosure. When tested in a square enclosure, which distorted both the absolute and relative geometry, the pigeons randomly chose among the 4 corners, indicating that their choices were not based on cues external to the apparatus. This study provides new insight into how metric properties of an environment are encoded by pigeons.
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