LSAT 104, Section 3, RC Passage 3, Homing Pigeons

RC Passage 3 Explanation

Paragraph Summaries

1. There are two explanations for how homing pigeons find their way home.
   They could keep track of the outward displacement, or they create mental maps.
2. Nothing seems to disorient pigeons, so the first explanation is unlikely.
3. Papi thinks pigeons create a map using smells. Pigeons can’t fly home if their noses are plugged.
4. It may be that plugged noses causes discomfort, and discomfort prevents pigeons from flying home.

Analysis

This passage is an inconclusive discussion of the inconclusive evidence related to homing pigeons homing ability.

Neither of the two theories is very satisfactory.

The first theory is that homing pigeons somehow track their motion, and therefore they always know how far they are from home.

The author uses the second paragraph to weaken this theory. Magnets don’t seem to affect pigeon’s homing sense, and neither does disorienting the birds.

The author does allow for the possibility that the birds can use either magnetism or physical orientation. Therefore we need an experiment that disables both at once (lines 29-33).

Lines 34-36 show that the author agrees that pigeons use a “map sense”, though it’s not clear how the map sense works.

The author introduces Papi’s theory, but then disagrees with it. Papi thought pigeons used their sense of smell. When he blocked their nostrils, they couldn’t get home.

The author disproves this using two methods. First, when there were no smells in the air, the birds could still fly home.

Second, nostril plugs are uncomfortable. When researchers blocked the pigeons’ sense of smell using a more comfortable method, the birds got home fine.

There are quite a few details in this passage, and the questions test you on them. It’s important to know where the details are, so you can go back and confirm you’re correct.