Why Do Pigeons Move Their Heads?
Pigeons bob their heads to achieve their vision-coordinated movement. Just like for every living creature, there needs to be perfect coordination between their movement and their sight for the purpose of locomotion.
Why do pigeons move their heads? This is so that they can adjust their eyesight with their balance and bodyweight, in a suitable manner that helps them move.
For bats, they use echolocation to map out the obstacle ahead of them, and even human beings have twitching motions of their eyes to coordinate movement.
In this article, I will explain why pigeons move their heads and how they achieve the perfect vision and movement coordination by doing so.
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What Is the Purpose of a Pigeon’s Bobbing Head Motion?
Pigeons typically struggle to walk straight due to poor synchronization between their vision and movement. Therefore, they use a head-bobbing technique to focus their vision on a specific object, allowing them to move in a balanced and effective way.
Pigeons also pivot their heads when wooing a female companion, which is another explanation. Male pigeons mingle with female pigeons in a variety of ways to show their passion. One of them involves dancing on their feet and bobbing their heads to a rhythm.
When they want to impress their female counterparts, they can hop, spin, stretch their wings, enlarge their chests, let off brief bursts of pigeon squalls, and of course wag their heads joyfully.
Some pigeons are very smart, and will bob their heads in approval when they are delighted or pleased by an action. If your pigeon likes a certain treat you give it, it might bob its head. Pigeons also bob their heads in happiness when they see their owners after a long time.
We have covered an in-depth article on “Pigeon Behavior“; if interested, you can check this article here.
How Does the Head-Bobbing Help Pigeons Balance?
The pigeons lock their gaze on a single item, which is how the head-bobbing technique operates. They then advance their entire body toward the target while maintaining flexibility in their necks. The entire body is moving forward while the neck is held in place, which causes the head bobbing motion.
In doing so, a sequence of balanced motions are produced, which are ideal for the pigeons to carry out their day to day movement.
Can Pigeons Walk without Bobbing?
Pigeons can definitely walk without bobbing! In fact, this was proven in an experiment conducted by Dr. Barrie J Frost in 1978, where he made pigeons walk on a treadmill.
The controlled environment allowed the pigeons to walk without bobbing their heads because it was easier for them to coordinate movement since the surroundings remained the same, and the walkway was the only area that was moving .
However, in natural environments, it might not be possible for pigeons to walk without bobbing. The fixation of their vision through head movement is one of the crucial locomotive features in pigeons.
Why Do Pigeon’s Heads Move In Such A Choppy Way?
Since pigeons cannot move their eyes, particularly their eyeballs, in the most efficient manner, they have to rely on the movement of their heads to manage their visionary senses.
The average time it takes for a pigeon to coordinate its movement with what it sees in front takes about 20 milliseconds. This is mainly done by the photoreceptors in the eyes of the pigeon. And this is why the movement of the pigeon’s head looks choppy and fast, as if they are banging their heads to metal music .
Why Do Pigeons Rotate Their Heads?
The rotating of pigeons’ heads serves the same purpose as bobbing their heads, to visually fixate on an object of interest while pursuing motion.
Imagine that you want to get a very good view of something that is 90 degrees to your right. You could use your peripheral vision and move your eyes to the right to get an idea of the object to your right. However, if you want to get the best view, you have to rotate your head.
Pigeons always require the rotation of their flexible necks to achieve the most optimal view for their movement or to understand what prey and predator are. This is primarily because their eye sockets are less flexible than other living beings like humans.
Do Pigeons Bob Their Heads When They Fly?
Pigeons do not necessarily bob their heads during flight, but they do engage themselves in what is known as head saccades. This is a quick, brisk movement of the head when the focus of fixation rapidly shifts from one object to another .
During the flight, it is necessary for the pigeons to quickly shift their fixations to be able to take turns or dip down in altitude. Thus, very fast head movements allow that to happen in pigeons, and in many cases, this can look synonymous to head bobbing.
Pigeons may also bob their heads while flying if they are feeling chirpy, or showing their courtship to female pigeons when in flight. At times pigeons will bob their heads during flying if it involves a well rehearsed dance routine where the pigeon flies and moves their head at the same time.
Final Words
Pigeons are smart creatures, but since they have suboptimal rotating capacity of their eye sockets, they have a difficult time to adjust their vision to their movement. This is why they have to move their heads, to be able to smoothly travel from one place to another through proper eye-movement coordination.
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- joeyhawksanimation.weebly.com
- 2newthings.com
- deviantart.com (Supnoobs)
- Esther Bubley, Photographer
- Baytoday.ca (Jeff Turl)
- Canva.com/Photos
- Simplemost.com (Jed Jacobsohn)
Reference:
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0042698996000429
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321442418_Pigeons_C_livia_Follow_Their_Head_during_Turning_Flight_Head_Stabilization_Underlies_the_Visual_Control_of_Flight
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10991/
- https://www.wired.com/2015/01/whats-birds-bob-heads-walk/
- https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/zoology/item/why-do-pigeons-bob-their-heads-when-they-walk/
