Coping with rising food costs in a closed economy: feeding behavior and nocturnal hypothermia in pigeons.
When the work price rises, animals don’t just peck more—they cut energy use by eating faster and cooling down at night.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team placed pigeons in a closed box. The birds had to peck a key to earn all their food.
Each day the required number of pecks went up. The researchers watched how the birds changed eating and body temperature.
What they found
At first the pigeons visited the feeder less and ate faster. Later their night-time body temperature dropped.
These two moves cut daily energy use and let the birds stay alive even though food cost more work.
How this fits with other research
Green et al. (1987) saw the same flock the year before. When free food showed up and earned food was cut, the birds worked and ate less. The new study flips the deal: work goes up, so the birds save energy instead of quitting.
Smith et al. (1997) later ran the test with cats. The cats also kept total food the same by changing meal size and timing. Together the papers show many species run an energy budget when response cost rises.
Cherek et al. (1970) had earlier shown high fixed ratios spark aggression. Bachman et al. (1988) now add a second hidden cost: lower body heat. High ratio schedules can push animals into both fight and conserve modes.
Why it matters
Your learners may also run an energy budget. When you stretch the response requirement too far, they might slow down, take shortcuts, or show irritability. Watch for drops in engagement, cold hands, or extra break requests. Thin schedules slowly and keep reinforcer size worth the effort.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The pigeon's response to increasing fixed-ratio schedules in a 24-hr closed economy is marked by changes in feeding behavior during the daily light phase and by changes in body temperature during the dark phase. The time course of these responses to increasing behavioral cost of obtaining food is very different. Feeding is most affected immediately, within the first day of exposure to moderate fixed ratios. The number of times the pigeons produce the food hopper each day decreases, and the rate at which they eat from the food hopper (grams per minute) when it is available increases, as the fixed ratio is raised. Body temperature is affected later, falling to progressively lower resting levels during the dark phase as body weight drops at the higher fixed ratios when food intake is reduced. The changes in feeding and in body temperature that occur as the fixed-ratio schedule increases seem to reduce daily energy expenditures, within the constraints imposed by the experiment. The ascending and descending limbs of the bitonic function obtained when total daily operant responding is plotted as a function of fixed-ratio schedule in the closed economy is possibly related to the occurrence of thermoregulatory strategies for energy conservation. The energetic analysis of performances in the closed economy requires consideration of a variety of energetic strategies available to the species being studied.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1988 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1988.50-441