indessed roscivs

I always thought that carrier pigeons were birds that were used in World War I to send messages (by attaching bits of paper to the pigeon’s leg and having them fly home), but were now extinct. Turns out I was wrong—one of the many duped by the pigeon triumvirate.

Turns out there are three different types of pigeons commonly confused by the uninitiated (such as myself): passenger, carrier, and homing. Only one of these is extinct, and it was (so far as I can tell) never actually used for delivering messages. The other two are actually the same species, and are not so much as endangered. Both of them have been used for hundreds of years for the pupose of message transportation.

The “passenger” is the only of the three that is extinct; the last one died in a zoo in 1914. I haven’t been able to figure out why it was called a “Passenger pigeon,” since it doesn’t seem to have ever been used to carry messages (or passengers, for that matter). However, it used to be the most common bird in North America. Audubon wrote of them in the early 1800s,

As I traveled on, the air was literally filled with pigeons. The light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses.

Before sunset I reached Louisville, Kentucky. The pigeons passed in undiminished number, and continued to do so for three days in succession. The people were all in arms. The banks of the Ohio were crowded with men and boys, incessantly shooting at the pilgrims, which flew lower as they passed over the river. Multitudes were thus destroyed. For a week or more, the population fed on no flesh other that of pigeons, and talked of nothing but pigeons.

They were easy to kill, and good to eat, and by the late 1800s had all but disappeared.

The “carrier” and “homing” pigeons, on the other hand, are actually the same species: columba livia. They are, however, entirely different breeds. Both can be trained to find their way home, although homing pigeons are much more commonly used today. Carrier pigeons were used by the ancient Egyptians and the Persians, according to Wikipedia, and were even used to proclaim the winner of the Olympics.

Homing pigeons have been trained and bred to find their way home over particularly long distances, and messages are typically written on very light paper, rolled into a tube, and attached to the bird’s leg (although some have started using tiny computer disks). Homing pigeons are, like carrier pigeons, thriving and well—nowhere near extinct. It was homing pigeons that were used in World War I (and II). Flying hundreds of miles back to their home is a normal task for homing pigeons—the world record is 1689 miles. There are all sorts of theories as to why these pigeons are so good at what they do, ranging from sensing the magnetic field of the earth, to navigating via atmospheric odors, or just by noting landmarks like humans do.

So next time you encounter a mention of one of the members of the pigeon triumvirate, hopefully these tidbits of information will mean that you won’t be caught unawares as I was.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 17th, 2007 at 8:57 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.