So here’s a controversial opinion: Pigeons are underrated.
Does each one of them create an estimated 25 pounds of shit each year? Yes.
Can that shit spread disease? Yes.
But the same applies to a couple of animals that we often share our beds with.
And pigeons, though they may seem useless, have actually played an outsized role in world
history and in the history of science.
If you read the first chapter of Darwin’s book On The Origin of Species - it isn’t
about the animals he famously observed in the tropics. Instead, he opened his book by
talking about pigeons.
Darwin noticed how pigeon fanciers had created a huge variety of pigeon breeds from a single
species -- columbia livia, the rock pigeon.
And he used this example of artificial selection to help communicate his own game-changing
theory of natural selection.
By that time, rock pigeons had been domesticated by humans for thousands of years, for food
and as pets.
It was actually once a status symbol to build giant bird houses for pigeons -- they’re
called dovecotes and they’re still standing today in many parts of Europe and Asia.
That’s ultimately why there are pigeons in American cities: Europeans were fond of
them, and they brought them here.
And until recently, pigeons were seen as useful companions.
For instance, they were deployed in war for thousands of years, including the World Wars.
“Sleek and well-fed pigeons, busy raising families of more flying messengers for use
by troops in the field”
They delivered a lot of messages.
That’s Phil Edwards - he writes about history here at Vox.
It didn’t need power. It didn’t need electrical lines. All it needed was the ability to fly
and it would carry the message with it, and reliably it would get home.
One pigeon saved 200 stranded American soldiers by delivering a message during World War 1,
despite being badly injured.
In the second world war, the UK expanded their pigeon corps to 250,000 birds and sent parachutes
carrying pigeons into occupied Europe- like a prepaid envelope- to solicit information.
32 pigeons ended up winning a medal for valor, the Dickin medal.
Scientists haven’t quite figured out the mechanism behind their homing abilities, but
some pigeons can be driven hundreds of miles away and still fly right home.
It’s a skill that hasn’t gone unnoticed by criminal elements.
“Brazilian prison authorities have discovered a new smuggling scheme used in jails. Carrier
pigeons are used to deliver drugs and mobile phones to inmates”
And it’s the secret to those ceremonial white “doves” - they’re pigeons. And
they just go home when they’re released.
During World War 2 pigeons were also part of a long-shot project headed by famous behaviorist
B.F. Skinner.
And the idea was that pigeons could be used to guide a missile toward its target.
Skinner found that he could train pigeons to peck at a target with high accuracy by
rewarding their behavior.
And they were able to hit a single street corner on a map with enough training. But
ultimately the army decided not to use it because there were better advances in guided
missiles and probably because it was pigeons.
Skinner kept working with pigeons for the rest of his career though. They helped him
show how reinforcement could shape even complex behaviors.
“I will try to pick out some particular pattern of behavior and make it a more frequent
part of the repertoire of the bird.”
Building on these ideas, a project headed by the Coast Guard later on tried to use the
pecking behavior to search for people lost at sea.
They lived in a little bubble at the bottom of a helicopter when they were on these missions.
What they did was they pecked when they saw objects floating in the water. And they did
really well.
“The contest was on. Who would spot the target first: The human observers or the pigeons?
They had an accuracy rate that was significantly higher than humans because they never fell
asleep, they had better eyesight and they were simply more interested in the task of
trying to find things because they believed that it would give them a reward.
The program never moved beyond testing because of equipment failures and budget cuts.
But also, our relationship with pigeons shifted. They became widely seen as pests.
In fact they’re one of the the birds not protected by federal law, and there’s an
entire industry dedicated to their removal.
"The sun shining bright. Everything seems alright when we're poisoning pigeons in the park."
Maybe because we have drones and email and GPS, all we want from our animals is for them
to be cute. But these little bastards could guide our f***ing missiles. I mean come on,
they deserve a little respect.
We'll murder them amid laughter and merriment, except for the few we take home to experiment."