Gaze following in pigeons increases with the number of demonstrators

Abstract

Gaze following, orienting one’s gaze in the same direction as another individual, is a key component of social attention across species, and expected to play an important role in group contexts. To investigate its collective dimension, this study tested whether the number of conspecifics providing a gaze cue influences gaze following in pigeons (Columba livia). Using motion capture to track fine-scale head and body movements, we presented attention-getting stimuli to subsets of pigeons (demonstrators), while others (observers) could not see them. Observer pigeons followed the gaze of demonstrators, specifically toward the target object rather than a perceptually similar distractor, and the frequency increased with the number of demonstrators. We found no evidence for nonlinear effects under our experimental conditions. In group-living species like pigeons, multiple individuals looking in the same direction may serve as a more reliable social signal, highlighting the critical role of collective context in animal social cognition.publishe