Effortful foraging activity for uncertain food in pigeons

When well-known food resources are running out, animals extinguish their foraging behavior in that food patch and increasingly work for reward-related information to decrease outcome uncertainty. In the absence of such information, a potentially successful strategy consists of spending more time and effort searching for profitable locations—a phenomenon known from extinction learning experiments conducted in conventional conditioning chambers. Here, we tested this hypothesis by means of a semi-natural “foraging board” allowing pigeons to move and look for food items inside perforated holes. The holes could be covered with a slit plastic tape, hiding the food items they contained while making them accessible to pigeons. Our goal was to determine how pigeons forage on hidden food items in an area associated with uncertainty (one in three holes baited, on average) when visible or hidden food items were available in an adjacent area associated with certainty (each hole baited). The number of food items was equivalent in both areas. We expected longer time spent and more pecks given in the uncertain vs. certain area with the food items visible in the certain area, as well as longer time spent and more pecks given per visit in the uncertain vs. certain area with the food items either visible or hidden in the certain area. Our results confirm these predictions.