by Ryan Ponto | Apr 4, 2017 | Bird Netting
In experimental research, scientists tend to assume that — unless they are looking specifically at reproduction or sexual behavior — male and female animals are alike, and mostly use males. But a new study by researchers at the University of California, Davis and the University of New Hampshire, published April 18 in Scientific Reports, shows surprisingly big differences in tissue gene expression between male and female rock doves. The work is part of an attempt to make science more gender-inclusive and aware of physiological and other differences between the sexes.
“There’s a problem of sex and gender inclusion at all levels of science from faculty to the animals we use,” said Rebecca Calisi, assistant professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior at UC Davis and senior author on the paper. “We’re trying to ameliorate that, at least in reproductive biology.”
The problem for experimental science, Calisi said, is that males and females can react very differently to different treatments, even when these don’t seem to be sex-related. For example, drugs as well-known as aspirin have different effects in men and women, and women report a higher rate of adverse reactions to drugs than do men.
Hundreds of Differences in Gene Activity
Calisi and co-author Matthew MacManes at the University of New Hampshire are exploring this problem using the reproductive system of the “rock dove,” or common pigeon, as C. Samuel Craiga model. Scientists back to Charles Darwin have worked with pigeons, and their physiology is well-studied. Like all other vertebrates, the gonads (testes and ovaries) are influenced by hormones produced by the pituitary gland, which itself is controlled by hormones from the hypothalamus, a structure in the brain. Sex hormones produced by the gonads (testosterone and estradiol) in turn feed back to the hypothalamus. This “hypothalamus-pituitary-gonad” axis is found in animals from fish and lizards to birds and people.
Calisi’s team looked at the baseline “transcriptome,” capturing all the genes expressed in the hypothalamus, pituitary and gonads in male and female pigeons when they were not engaged in reproductive behavior. They found hundreds of differences in gene activity between males and females.
“There are incredible differences in gene expression, especially in the pituitary,” Calisi said. The results show that there are far more sex-based differences in the pituitary than previously thought, she said.
The team has created a publicly accessible database for researchers of all the patterns of gene activation that differ between male and female pigeons. The results should generate new leads for investigating male and female reproduction, and encourage researchers to look harder at the effect of sex bias in physiological studies.
Having established baseline genomic data for the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonad axis in the pigeon model, Calisi and MacManes plan to use it to look at the influence of sex on other conditions, such as stress and parental care.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | Apr 3, 2017 | Bird Netting
Homing pigeons may share the human capacity to build on the knowledge of others, improving their navigational efficiency over time, a new Oxford University study has found.
The ability to gather, pass on and improve on knowledge over generations is known as cumulative culture. Until now humans and, arguably some other primates, were the only species thought to be capable of it.
Takao Sasaki and Dora Biro, Research Associates in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, conducted a study testing whether homing pigeons can gradually improve their flight paths, over time. They removed and replaced individuals in pairs of birds that were given a specific navigational task. Ten chains of birds were released from the same site and generational succession was simulated with the continuous replacement of birds familiar with the route with inexperienced birds who had never flown the course before. The idea was that these individuals could then pass their experience of the route down to the next pair generation, and also enable the collective intelligence of the group to continuously improve the route’s efficiency.
The findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest that over time, the student does indeed become the teacher. The pairs’ homing performance improved consistently over generations – they streamlined their route to be more direct. Later generation groups eventually outperformed individuals that flew solo or in groups that never changed membership. Homing routes were also found to be more similar in consecutive generations of the same chain of pigeon pairs than across them, showing cross-generational knowledge transfer, or a “culture” of homing routes.
Takao Sasaki, co-author and Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology said: ‘At one stage scientists thought that only humans had the cognitive capacity to accumulate knowledge as a society. Our study shows that pigeons share these abilities with humans, at least to the extent that they are capable of improving on a behavioural solution progressively over time. Nonetheless, we do not claim that they achieve this through the same processes.’
When people share and pass knowledge down through generations, our culture tends to become more complex over time, There are many good examples of this from manufacturing and engineering. By contrast, when the process occurs between homing pigeons, the end result is an increase in the efficiency, (in this case navigational), but not necessarily the complexity, of the behaviour.
Takao Sasaki added: ‘Although they have different processes, our findings demonstrate that pigeons can accumulate knowledge and progressively improve their performance, satisfying the criteria for cumulative culture. Our results further suggest that cumulative culture does not require sophisticated cognitive abilities as previously thought.’
This study shows that collective intelligence, which typically focuses on one-time performance, can emerge from accumulation of knowledge over time.
Dora Biro, co-author and Associate Professor of Animal Behaviour concludes: ‘One key novelty, we think, is that the gradual improvement we see is not due to new ‘ideas’ about how to improve the route being introduced by individual birds. Instead, the necessary innovations in each generation come from a form of collective intelligence that arises through pairs of birds having to solve the problem together – in other words through ‘two heads being better than one’.’
Moving forward, the team intend to build on the study by investigating if a similar style of knowledge sharing and accumulation occurs in other multi-generational species’ social groups. Many animal groups have to solve the same problems repeatedly in the natural world, and if they use feedback from past outcomes of these tasks or events, this has the potential to influence, and potentially improve, the decisions the groups make in the future.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | Apr 2, 2017 | Bird Netting
- The ability to pass on and improve on knowledge is known as cumulative culture
- Until now only humans were thought capable of passing on such information
- Over generations pigeons streamlined their route to be more direct and faster
Homing pigeons are known for their impressive ability to navigate home over long distances.
Now a new study suggests this skill may be passed on between generations.
Researchers believe that homing pigeons share the human capacity to build on the knowledge of others, which explains why their navigational accuracy improves over time.
This is the first time that the ability to find and improve on knowledge over generations has been seen in a non-human species.
Researchers from Oxford University conducted a study testing whether homing pigeons can gradually improve their flight paths over time.
They removed and replaced individuals in pairs of birds that were given a specific navigational task.
Researchers simulated generational succession by replacing birds familiar with the route with inexperienced birds that had never flown the course before.
The idea was that experienced individuals could pass their experience of the route down to the next pair generation.
This would enable the collective intelligence of the group to continuously improve the route’s efficiency.
The findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest that over time the student does indeed become the teacher and pigeons learn from each other.
Results showed that the birds’ homing performance improved consistently over generations – they streamlined their route to be more direct, making them faster than those that worked the route out on their own.
Dr Sasaki, co-author of the study, said: ‘At one stage scientists thought that only humans had the cognitive capacity to accumulate knowledge as a society.
‘Our study shows that pigeons share these abilities with humans, at least to the extent that they are capable of improving on a behavioural solution progressively over time.
‘Nonetheless, we do not claim that they achieve this through the same processes’, he said.
Dr Dora Biro, co-author of the study, added: ‘One key novelty, we think, is that the gradual improvement we see is not due to new ‘ideas’ about how to improve the route being introduced by individual birds.
‘Instead, the necessary innovations in each generation come from a form of collective intelligence that arises through pairs of birds having to solve the problem together – in other words through “two heads being better than one.”‘
Moving forward, the team hopes to build on the study by investigating if a similar style of knowledge sharing and accumulation occurs in other multi-generational species’ social groups.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | Apr 1, 2017 | Bird Netting
JANAKPURDHAM: Over a dozen of pigeons were found dead in and around the Janaki Temple in Janakpurdham in Dhanusha district recently.
According to a social activist Nathunilal Das, the pigeons domesticated in the temple area were found dead and the cause of the death was unknown till now.
He said many of his pigeons also died in past three days.
The Dhanusha District Livestock Service Office is yet to ascertain the disease behind the deaths.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | Mar 31, 2017 | Bird Netting
LUBBOCK, Texas (KLBK) — A team of administrators and students at Texas Tech University are working together to fight the mass pigeon population on campus. They’re now working on distributing a birth control that is safe for the pigeons to eat, and that won’t allow their eggs to complete fertilization process.
“It’s used to make the eggs infertile, it breaks up the layers so the egg yolk and egg white do not connect. So the bird will keep laying eggs but the eggs will not fertilize. It does not harm the birds,” Erin Bohlander, a Ph.D. student in the Natural Resource Management Program at Texas Tech said.
Sean Childers, the Assistant Vice President of Operations at Texas Tech, heads the project and said the birth control won’t save them money immediately but they expect it to drastically in the future.
“We spend over $100,000 a year on man-hours and resources to clean up pigeon remains around campus. We wanted to take a step back and think more globally. How can we get ahead of this situation? What can we do that is non-harmful and humane and get ahead of the population,” Childers said.
The birth control is called “Ovo” and will be mixed within feeders with cracked corn. Bohlander said they anticipate having to feed all year long since Pigeon’s breed year-round.
“We’re hoping to humanely decrease the population by 90-95 percent,” Bohlander said.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
