… in denser pigeon flocks, this observation indicates that, unlike the V-formation, flight in a
cluster flock comes at an energetic cost. Figure 3: Relationship between flock factor and flap …

… 177 km and 256 min of flight. We provide the first evidence that during a long-duration flight,
pigeons’ pairwise and group-level distances increased (ie group structure changed), while …

… group phenotypic composition can affect the cost of transport. Overall, we found that flocks of
leader pigeons are denser, and faster than flocks … flying in a flock comes at a cost in pigeons…

… that for pigeons flying in such a tight flock actually comes with aerodynamic costs rather than
… On the other hand, data analysed in this article consists of free flights, ie, when birds fly near …

… flights 19–21), we gave a pigeon additional solo flights until its route achieved this criterion
of similarity. No pigeon … 2011 Flying in a flock comes at a cost in pigeons. Nature 474, 494–…

… data is that such flights do not save energy, but rather come at a cost. Energy saving is not …
the reasons for flying in flocks. Perhaps the episodic flights of racing pigeons allow the birds to …

… group came in 2001 using free-flying great-white pelicans (Pelecanus onocrotalus). Birds
flying out of formation had higher heart rates … -formation flock, flying in a cluster comes at a cost …

… By testing the birds individually after a series of flock flights, we found that leaders had
learned straighter homing routes than followers, as we would expect if followers attended less to …

… flock once per day over a total of 11 days. Second, after these flock flights were completed,
we released the birds … of flight turning rate, the number of individuals in a flock (9–11) and the …

… To investigate the pairwise interaction among individuals, we show the heat map of
interaction occurrence rate of each pairwise members in Figure S5 (four releases of …