Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Homing Pigeons

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

Before the development of electricity and electrical communications, the fastest information could travel was the speed of a horse. Maybe a ship might have been a bit faster depending on the route, but for the most part, the speed of information was limited to the speed of a human.  However, there was one exception to this. It was a communications method that could only carry small amounts of information, it only worked in one direction, and the number of messages you could send was limited, but it was faster than anything else.  It was used for centuries and was still relied upon even after the development of radio. Learn more about homing pigeons and how they were used throughout history on this Episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.  Sponsors Available nationally, look for a bottle of Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond at your local store. Find out more at heavenhilldistillery.com/hh-bottled-in-bond.php Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free offer and get $20 off. Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month. Use the code EverythingEverywhere for a 20% discount on a subscription at Newspapers.com. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before the development of electricity and electronic communications, the fastest information could travel was the speed of a horse. Maybe a ship might have been a little bit faster depending on the route, but for the most part, the speed of information was limited to the speed of a human. However, there was one exception to this. It was a communications method that could carry only small amounts of information, it only worked in one direction, and the number of messages you could send was limited. But it was faster than anything else. It was used for centuries and was still relied upon even after the invention of radio. Learn more about homing pigeons and how they were used throughout history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thuline podcast from NPR. You might be thinking that an episode on pigeons is one of the less serious episodes that I've done. In a world with instantaneous global communications, the idea of sending messages by pigeon seems rather antiquated and maybe even cute. However, I assure you that this is a very serious topic. Homing pigeons once played an incredibly important role,

and there are numerous documented cases of these birds, saving the lives of thousands of people. So, what are homing pigeons and how exactly do they work? Many but not all birds are migratory. They have an innate sense of direction. Some species of birds are capable of traveling halfway across the globe during their migration and then flying back again later in the year. We don't know exactly how birds are able to navigate such long distances,

but it probably has something to do with the Earth's magnetic field. In some species of birds, this navigational ability, manifests itself as a homing instinct. Rather than migrating long distances, they're able to find their way back to their nest. One of the birds that can do this is a certain species of domesticated pigeon. The domesticated pigeon might be the world's oldest domesticated bird.

It was believed to be domesticated sometime around 10,000 years ago, and it was bred from the rock dove. If you've seen a pigeon out in the wild, what you've probably seen is actually a feral version of the domestic pigeon, which is descended from pigeons that escaped years ago. Domestic pigeons were originally domesticated for food, but at some point, someone realized that some of these pigeons had a special ability. They were able to fly back to their nest, regardless of where they were released. As with bird migrations, we aren't totally sure how these pigeons do it, but it's probably a combination of

magnetism and landmark identification. It was then realized that short messages could be attached to the legs of these pigeons, enabling them to deliver information rapidly. The pigeons that showed this ability began to be selectively bred with other pigeons, which is how the domesticated homing pigeon was created. The first evidence of using pigeons to send information was approximately 3,500 years ago in ancient Egypt. Pliny the Elder wrote about pigeons being used by the Roman military for communications. The ancient Greeks used pigeons to transmit the results of the ancient Olympic Games.

The Islamic Caliphate, when it was centered in Baghdad, also used messenger pigeons as a means of communication, and Genghis Khan also did as well. The Republic of Genoa developed a series of defensive watchtowers out in the Mediterranean, and each one had homing pigeons to send notifications quickly back to Genoa in the case of attack. As antiquated as sending messages via pigeon seems today, messenger pigeons only grew in popularity during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Even in a world with telegraph lines, telegraph cables didn't go everywhere, and there was a need for messages to be sent from soldiers in the field back to their headquarters.

During the Franco-Prussian War, German forces laid siege to Paris and surrounded the city, cutting off all lines of communications. The only communication in or out of the city was by Messenger Pigeon. During the siege, pigeons carried thousands of messages. And here I should note, because I don't think I've mentioned it yet, that homing pigeons only work one way. Pigeons have a homing instinct which lets them return to their roost. However, they can't go back and forth between arbitrary points.

So, if you want to send a message back to a central command post, you have to bring a pigeon with you. During the siege of Paris, the ruse were located in the city. So how did the pigeons get out of the city if all access in and out of the city was closed? They would actually send pigeons in balloons. People outside the city would then pick the pigeons up, attach messages to them, and send them back to Paris. The Pigeon service during the Siege of Paris was also one of the first to use microfilm. By shrinking down multiple letters to a single photographic image, an estimated 1 million

communications were sent during the four months of the siege, using around 1,000 pigeon dispatches. Other countries observed the success of the pigeon communication system during the Franco-Prussian war and adopted their own pigeon service in the years that followed. By the start of the First World War, almost every major power had to be a major power had a pigeon service, save for Britain, which had actually terminated their service prior to the war. During the Battle of the Marne, the French brought 72 portable pigeon lofts with them for communications. In 1917, the United States Army Signal Corps established the U.S. Army Pigeon Breeding and Training Center

in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. During the war, the pigeons more than prove their worth. The most famous case was that of a pigeon called Cher Ami, which is French for Dear Friend. Chair Ami was actually a British pigeon that was donated to the U.S. Army Signal Corps. It flew 12 missions successfully during the war, but it was its last mission, which is the one it was most remembered for. On October 3, 1918, during the Battle of the Argonne Forest, a unit of 550 men of the 77th Division, led by Major Charles White Whittlesea, was trapped in a low-lying area behind enemy lines. In addition to being behind enemy lines without food or ammunition, American forces were starting to fire on their position, not knowing that they were there. Despite not having food or ammo, they did have pigeons.

They attempted to send a message, but the Germans, suspecting that they might communicate by pigeon, shot the first one down. Then they sent another pigeon, which was also shot down by the Germans. Finally, chair a me was sent. The message attached to his leg read as follows. Quote, we are along the road parallel to 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on. us. For heaven's stakes, stop it. When Cherami was set loose, the Germans saw it again and fired.

The pigeon fell into some brush having been hit. However, it soon began flying again and made it back to its roost at division headquarters approximately 25 miles or 40 kilometers away. He made the trip in just 25 minutes. When the pigeon team found the bird, he had been shot through the chest, had lost an eye, and had one leg dangling by just a tendon. Medics started. did what they could to treat Cherami. However, the message did get through, and 194 men were saved. The unit was dubbed the Lost Battalion and became one of the most celebrated stories to come out of the war. The messenger pigeon Cherami was actually awarded the Quad du Ghire Medal with a palm oak leaf

cluster by the nation of France. The story of Cherami became known to almost all American school children after the war. However, Cherami was not the only pigeon hero of the war. Another pigeon by the name of President Wilson, just a day after Cherami's flight was sent on behalf of an infantry unit that was under fire. Like Cherami, President Wilson was hit but managed to deliver his message for artillery support. There was one German pigeon that was captured by the Americans and became a breeding pigeon after the war. Nicknamed Kaiser, he remained in service until his death in 1948, being the only pigeon to have served in both wars. The Pigeon Service proved to be a success, so it continued after the war.

The United States Army Pigeon Service remained, and the British resurrected its Pigeon Service in 1939, the National Pigeon Service. The American Pigeon Service had 3,150 soldiers and 54,000 war pigeons in its ranks going into the Second World War. The British had over 200,000 homing pigeons in service across all of its branches during the war. As in the first world of war, pigeons again proved surprisingly useful, even in a war that extensively used radio communications. When the Allies landed on the beach in Normandy in 1944, they didn't have any secure radio communications and they didn't want to give away their position in just the first few hours of the invasion.

So they used homing pigeons to send the first messages of the successful landing back to Britain. The first pigeon to get back was named Gustav. Perhaps the most famous pigeon of the war was named G.I. Joe. On October 18, 1943, he saved the lives of approximately 1,000 British soldiers stationed in the Italian village of Calveccia. The soldiers were at risk of being bombed by their own Allied forces, who were unaware that the British had recently captured the village from the Germans. Released over 20 miles away from British headquarters, G.I. Joe flew this distance in an astonishing 20 minutes, delivering the message, in time to call off the airstrike only minutes before it was scheduled to begin. In 1943, the United Kingdom established the Dickin Medal to honor heroic animals that served during the Second World War. It's been likened to the Victoria Cross for animals. And of the 54 medals awarded during the war, 32 of them were given to pigeons.

Needless to say, organized homing pigeon services didn't survive very long after the war. The United States Army Pigeon Service was formally discontinued in 1957, and the British National Pigeon Service was retired in 1945. In a world with cell phones, fiberoptic cables, and communication satellites, homing pigeons may seem a bit like an anachronism. However, in 2016, ISIS was caught using pigeons for communications because other modern modes of communication were simply too risky. Today, homing pigeons are raised mostly as a hobby, and some enthusiasts race them in competitions. However, there have been a few people who have wondered if pigeons could work

with modern communication systems, or perhaps even compete with them. In 1990, in an April Fool's joke, a proposal submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force written by Dave Weitzman suggested the creation of what he dubbed IP over avian carriers, or IPOAC. In 2001, a user group in Bergen-Norway actually implemented the IPOAC protocol with pigeons. They sent nine packets of data over 5 kilometers. And for the record, the network recorded a packet loss ratio of 55% and ping times ranging from 50 to 100 minutes. However, an even better test was conducted in 2023.

A YouTuber by the name of Jeff Geerling tested a gigabit internet connection against a pigeon carrying a 3 terabyte USB drive. The pigeon was sent at the same time that a large file began being copied over the internet. The pigeon traveled only a mile, but it was 8,000. able to transfer data significantly faster than the internet connection. In fact, he extrapolated that a pigeon with three terabytes of storage would be faster for all distances less than 600 miles or 965 kilometers. And to the best of my knowledge, a test at those distances has never been attempted.

The era of the homing pigeon has ended. Nonetheless, you should at least recognize that for several thousand years, the fastest means of communication available to humans was the pigeon. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. Today's review comes from listener KLC number two on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write. Varied and interesting.

I love to learn and love everything everywhere daily. The content spans such a wide range that it's interesting and engaging. I've been listening for less than a year, so I've not made it back through all of the previous podcast yet. I have recommended this to many friends. Thanks for your research work on putting these together. Well, thank you, KLC number two. Just keep at it going through those past episodes.

Then one day, hopefully sooner rather than later, you too will become a member of the Completionist Club. And on that day, you will be welcome into the Completionist Clubhouse with open arms. Remember that if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you two can have it read on the show. Doing the Pigeon. Doing the pigeon Dancing a little smidgin

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