C U LT U R A ourselves! In fact, from Egypt to Rome, to the early 20th century, the main roles of a pigeon were dinner or being bred into silly shapes from rich people. Over time, here and there a few of these domestic birds escaped and returned to “wild” life. Incidentally, they’ve never left cities. Watching pigeons pecking at the sidewalk, you might deduce they are not the smartest birds in the tree. For instance, they can’t solve puzzles like crows, they can’t talk like parrots and the pigeon’s brain is only about the size of a fingertip. Nevertheless, like most things in nature, there is more to the story. The major part of their skull is eyeballs: if they were the size of humans, their eyes would be as big as grapefruits. Those huge eyes have five color receptors, which compared to our three, let them see what we can’t even imagine. Pigeon vision is a bomb. Literally. During WW II, the psychologist Skinner tried to turn these birds into weapons. He trained the animals to keep an image centered on a tiny screen by pecking at it, then he hooked this up to a navigation sysE t C e t e r a M a jo r a n a
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tem to load it inside of a bomb, to create explosive missiles piloted by kamikaze pigeons. He built several successful prototypes, however, the army never let it get off the ground. As well as this, they are so tightly bonded to their home, thanks to an incredible instinct, that we’ve used them as messengers for centuries before Paul Reuter founded a global news service. Different experiments have found that pigeons use visual maps, Earth’s magnetic field, the angle of the sun, and even smells to navigate. Surprisingly, when scientists knocked each of these senses out, some birds could still find their way home, thus they probably use senses we don’t know about yet. As far as I’m concerned, now you are aware enough of pigeons’ importance in Science and History (also cookery, but please do not make experiments at home, it can be dangerous), therefore I believe you won’t insult them anymore. Last information: have you ever wondered why, even though pigeons are everywhere, you’ve never seen baby pigeons? Well, they do exist and they are really ugly. G e n n a io 2 0 2 2 - N ° 5
