期刊
FRONTIERS IN ZOOLOGY
卷 11, 期 -, 页码 -出版社
BMC
DOI: 10.1186/s12983-014-0064-y
关键词
Birds; Flight; Vision; Body awareness; Obstacle avoidance
类别
资金
- ARC [DP0559306]
- ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science Grant [CE0561903]
- HFSP [RGP0003/2013]
- Queensland Smart State Premier's Fellowship
- Australian Research Council [DP0559306] Funding Source: Australian Research Council
Introduction: When birds fly in cluttered environments, they must tailor their flight to the gaps that they traverse. We trained budgerigars, Melopsittacus undulatus, to fly through a vertically oriented gap of variable width, to investigate their ability to perform evasive manoeuvres during passage. Results: When the gap was wider than their wingspan, the birds passed through it without interrupting their flight. When traversing narrower gaps, however, the birds interrupted their normal flight by raising their wings or tucking them against the body, to prevent contact with the flanking panels. Our results suggest that the birds are capable of estimating the width of the gap in relation to their wingspan with high precision: a mere 6% reduction in gap width causes a complete transition from normal flight to interrupted flight. Furthermore, birds with shorter wingspans display this transition at narrower gap widths. Conclusion: We conclude from our experiments that the birds are highly aware of their individual body size and use precise, anticipatory, visually based judgements to control their flight in complex environments.
作者
我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。
推荐
暂无数据