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The Analysis of Motion in the Visual Systems of Birds

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Perception and Motor Control in Birds

Abstract

Birds share with many other animal species a highly mobile life-style which produces, amongst other things, a very rich diversity of patterns of motion across their visual fields. As we have argued elsewhere (Frost 1982, 1985, 1993; Frost et al. 1990), these different patterns of visual motion fall generally into two broad classes, object motion and self-induced motion, the former usually resulting from some action by another animal, while the latter is usually produced by some action of the observing animal itself. Each category contains a large number of ecologically specific patterns of visual motion and, in a natural environment, patterns from one or both categories may occur concurrently. It is the task of the visual system to segregate or parse these various patterns of motion into the appropriate events that gave rise to them, and integrate them with other visual features, so that ultimately the bird may respond with behaviour that is appropriate for the situation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6, Canada

    B. J. Frost, D. R. Wylie & Y. C. Wang

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  1. B. J. Frost
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  2. D. R. Wylie
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  3. Y. C. Wang
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University College London, Gower St, WC1E 6BT, London, UK

    Mark N. O. Davies

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Nottingham, NG7 2RD, Nottingham, UK

    Patrick R. Green

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© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Frost, B.J., Wylie, D.R., Wang, Y.C. (1994). The Analysis of Motion in the Visual Systems of Birds. In: Davies, M.N.O., Green, P.R. (eds) Perception and Motor Control in Birds. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75869-0_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-75869-0_15

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