Huber, L. 1994. Amelioration of laboratory conditions for pigeons (Columba livia). Animal Welfare 3, 321-324.

Pigeons, rats and other subjects of conditioning experiments in the behaviourism tradition of ethology have been somewhat neglected in terms of animal welfare. They have typically been housed in small indoor cages, isolated from their group, and kept under highly sterile room conditions. Their daily routine was restricted to sleeping, feeding and undergoing conditioning tests. The omission of social contact prevents the animal from displaying natural behaviours such as courting, pairing, breeding, establishing the pecking order etc. Connecting channels and modified Skinner Boxes with automatic weighing features were developed in order to combine housing in large outdoor aviaries and easy testing under controlled laboratory conditions.