How do homing pigeons know where to go?

Question

Like how do they know, when you send them out, who to take the letter to?

Answer 1

They are taken from the place they are meant to fly to ahead of time. (So when they went to war they took pigeons from a London pigeon senter thingy) and they fly back "home" by thier instincts.

Answer 2

Its just there natural instinct i guess. I live in PA and my brother has homing pigeons. We used to visit relatives in Ny and let them go on the George Washington Bridge and they always flew back home which is like 150 miles. They are very smart, I guess!

Answer 3

Fascinating question, both from a biological point of view and from a sporting one.

In fact, pigeons don't find the person that they are supposed to take the letter to.  what they do is to return to their home loft and the person finds them there with the letter.

How exactly they find that loft from miles away -- I've had pigeons return from over 600 miles -- is still not completely understood.

We have found out in the past forty years or so, that pigeons have a few different ways of finding their way home.

1. They are able to tell from the angle of the sun against the horizon that they aren't at their home loft area.  They are somehow able to accurately determine which way they have to go to return, and they go in that direction until they reach home.

2) If the sun isn't visible, they have another system as well.  They have small pieces of magnetite (natural magnets) in the cells between their eyes on their head.  These sense the magnetic field of the earth, and again they are able to orient themselves and head in the direction that they know is the way home.

3) Some results in Italy suggest that pigeons MAY be able to accurately sense some odors in the air that help them reach home.

4) Pigeons can hear infrasound (sound waves so low that we humans can't hear them).  Pigeons in California are said to be able to hear the noise of the wind rushing through canyons in the Rocky Mountains a few states away.  That ability to hear very low sounds which travel hundreds of miles, may also be an aid to homing.

The fact is all pigeons are  highly evolved organisms with the ability to home fast and accurately.  (Feral birds can home often up to about 50 miles.   Homing pigeons (a domestic breed created by humans over the past two hundred years) can accurately home over 600 miles.

If you'd like to learn a bit more about homing pigeon (racing pigeons) try checking out:

http://www.pigeon.org

http://www.ifpigeon.com/

Answer 4

I think that they have something like a built in compass (don’t laugh) somehow the are able to figure out were “home” is by their position w/ the polar magnets. I’m not 100% sure though. That’s just what I’ve herd. I know an old guy that raises them.