Study
Forty years of olfactory navigation in birds
Gagliardo, Anna
Journal of Experimental Biology, 2013
Reviews the experimental programme begun by Papi in the early 1970s: pigeons made anosmic by nerve section, nasal anaesthesia or zinc sulphate, birds exposed to artificial odours, and birds held in filtered or deflected airflow, all released at unfamiliar sites.
- Studied in
- Columba livia, Aves
- Sample size
- review of four decades of olfactory-deprivation and displacement experiments
Anosmic pigeons released at unfamiliar sites are impaired in choosing a homeward bearing, while their compass orientation and their homing from familiar areas remain intact; the effect has been reproduced across laboratories and methods of olfactory deprivation.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Olfactory information contributes to the map step of navigation from unfamiliar territory rather than to the compass step, and the debate is now about what the odours encode rather than whether they matter.
How NatureHQ reads it
The record NatureHQ leans on for the pigeon claim check, because it is the account of a forty-year argument by somebody who ran a large part of it. It is also where the shape of the answer becomes clear: smell matters where the bird does not know the landscape, and stops mattering where it does.
- A review, and one written from inside the school of thought it describes; the alternative readings are represented but not neutral.
- Olfactory deprivation is invasive and can impair more than smell, which is the standing criticism of the whole programme.
- Domestic homing pigeons, which are not a wild migratory bird.
Taking away a pigeon’s sense of smell, and choosing where to release it
Smell seems an unlikely way to find a place a hundred kilometres away. Does removing it actually stop a pigeon?
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: The Company of BiologistsPublished by The Company of Biologists.
Checked against Crossref on 2026-09-28, and they agree on the title, the authors and the year.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-09-03.