Blog Post #5: Carrier Pigeons and Dumb Humans

 

In class we learned about different forms of technology and how it has evolved over time to get to where we are today. One of the most interesting ones that I learned came from Julia Foster and she talked about Carrier Pigeons. I thought it was very interesting that a pigeon no matter where you take it knows where "home" is and knows how to fly back there at any time. On the surface level it made me wonder how humans were able to figure this out about pigeons, but once it was proven that pigeons always know where home is it would be easy to see why humans started using them to pass messages along. 

I was very intrigued by the way that carrier pigeons were used in war especially in World War 1. For Germany to use the carrier pigeons as a way to gain intelligence on the enemy by strapping a camera across the bird's chest is genius. They were able to use things that you would find in nature to help game-plan against the enemy but did not have to use planes which obviously are way easier to spot and recognize and doesn't run the risk of costing a human their life.

So after giving human's credit for coming up with at the time a creative and faster way to transmit messages to people Dr. Smith ruins it for me by telling me about a pigeon being held captive for EIGHT MONTHS by Indian authorities on suspicion of being a Chinese spy. In the year 2024 by the way... at this point thanks to bigger and better technology I do not think countries are going to use pigeons anymore to transmit information. Much less train one to become a spy and be able to communicate back what they see. 

Overall my big takeaway from learning about carrier pigeons was how humans can be smart and creative but also very dumb at the same time. Also with how many animal rights organizations that there are in the world now I am surprised I did not hear or read a bigger outcry to get this pigeon freed. You would think that a pigeon being held against its will by a country would be at the top of their list of animal injustices to talk about.