Should I stay or should I go? Pigeons' (Columba livia) performance of a foraging task has implications for optimal foraging theory and serial pattern learning.

Optimal foraging theory suggests that animals have evolved to maximize their net rate of energy intake; all things being equal, they should leave a current depleting patch when an alternative patch would provide either more or sooner food. In nature, however, typically all things are not equal. For example, uncertainty about the value of alternative patches, time to travel to those patches, and potential dangers incurred in changing patches may delay leaving the depleting patch, when it would otherwise be optimal to do so.