While channel-surfing, I chanced upon a show called Tokoro-san no gakkou de oshiete kurenai sokontokoro! (“Tokoro’s what they don’t teach you in school.” ) The show tries to answer some of the more trivial and difficult questions of our time, such as: why do pigeons bob their head?
Now, dopers will recognize this as one of Cecil’s classics. In the column, Cecil favours the idea that pigeons bob their head to maintain balance. Readers answered that no, it was in fact related to vision. Cecil concluded:
Well, George Tokoro’s gang had the brilliant idea of trying to see what would happen if you put a pigeon on a treadmill. Dopers will of course recognize the similarity to one of the great, great questions of our time.
So… What happens when you put a pigeon on a treadmill?
It doesn’t take off apparently.
It doesn’t bob its head either. Yes, that’s right. The pigeon walks with an utterly stiff neck.
Why? They wondered if it was because the scenery didn’t change. They hence took the pigeon off the treadmill and covered its eyes with a tiny pigeon blindfold. Low and behold, the brave pigeon walked into darkness with eyes blind and neck stiff.
They proved Cecil wrong. To make sure this wasn’t the case of some random super-pigeon, they repeated the experiment with various other birds that usually bob their heads, and the results were consistent.
It’s obvious really: Because the pigeon is stationary relative to the both the observer and the air currents that both the observer and the treadmill share the pigeon’s motion does not generate enough wind to provide adaquate lift on it’s head, thus the head does not bob.
This is, of course, assuming that the pigeon has frictionless ankles and feet made of an indestructable material.