Post 5: Carrier Pigeons

Pigeons: City Rat or Sky Heroes? 

I wanted to talk to my mom today, just to tell her about my day and maybe have her send me a picture of my cat. Our entire interaction occurred with less than a second in between our messages that were instantly sent. Later, I called my friend, asking where we should grab lunch and reached out to a professor asking about a grade via email. All of these actions, which resulted in conversations, occurred instantly.

All communication that happens today happens instantly with very little wait time in between transactions.

But there wasn’t always this seamless and instant means of communication. Before calling, texting or emailing, it took much longer to directly communicate with others. With writing letters, it would take days to get responses back and forth. But before there was a postal service, there was another, longer means of communicating between two people.

Carrier Pigeons.

That's right, pigeons. Nicknamed: New York City’s “rats of the sky”, these birds were honored and trusted with the responsibility to deliver messages from one party to the other. This honestly seems like an insane concept. Birds, trusted with the responsibility to not only physically hold onto the paper message, but to also deliver the message to the correct correspondence. 

And they did. 

From the Middle Ages to the 1800s, carrier pigeons were the most popular means of communication, especially over long distances. Carrier pigeons were first introduced in the nineteenth century in Eastern Europe and soon became a desired and easy means of communication. In the beginning, it was mainly aristocrats and the wealthy who would obtain these trained pigeons and utilize them. Then, during and after WWI, the pigeons became a tool for transmitting messages during wartime and they became a necessary military resource. 

But how? 

How did the military learn to utilize and rely on pigeons, which now have a reputation for being a dirty pest. This city nuisance has a “homing ability”, which means that they have the ability to tell where an original location is, “home” even when traveling from unfamiliar areas. Therefore, pigeons would be able to take the message from home to a second location and then travel back home, to let the author know their message made it safely and the pigeon could return with a response. 

This is clearly a marvel of nature and unfamiliar means of communication by today's standards, with our means of instant-messaging. Learning about how intelligent these animals are was quite surprising, since they are met with such a negative connotation today. Our military wouldn’t have been as successful as it had been without these animals learning and providing a means of communication between two parties. It also made me reflect on the patience and trust people had by putting their entrusted messages into the ‘hands’ of pigeons and having to wait days for a response, even if it was an important, urgent situation. 

And to think that today, I get inpatient when the picture of my cat takes a couple minutes to load.