Male pigeons increase incubation when food scarce, study finds
Researchers at the Technical University of Munich studied 75 pigeon nests across three cities and found that when food becomes scarce, male pigeons spend more time incubating eggs, compensating for reduced effort by females. The study showed that females with adequate food supply spent 81 percent of their time incubating eggs while males spent 17 percent, but under reduced food availability, females decreased their incubation to 75 percent and males increased to 22 percent, keeping overall nest attendance virtually unchanged. The researchers note that feeding bans—used to reduce pigeon populations—primarily affected female pigeons, which were about 10 percent lighter when food-restricted, and suggest that measures acting earlier in the reproductive cycle, such as replacing eggs with dummy eggs, may be more welfare-friendly population control approaches.
