Carrier Pigeons: Mother Nature’s Express Delivery Service

Today, if your home phone is still plugged into the wall, you are being archaic. We live in a world of instant everything – food, calls, texts...Imagine what it must have been like to have to send a pigeon to deliver your message and wait for the reply?Show more

Pigeons have been used as messengers since 3000 B.C. The raven might have the thunder in Game of Thrones, but it is the pigeons who are the go to bird to deliver your message even today.

How do they do it, you ask? They just fly home! Thanks to their abilities for magnetoreception, they instinctually align and orient themselves to the magnet fields of the Earth. The simplest example comes from the first Olympic games in 776 BC, when every athlete was to bring his own pigeon; if they won, he would release the pigeon, so that the bird might deliver the news of the victory to his village.

Even the famed Genghis Khan was a huge fan of homing pigeons and used the birds to establish communications with Eastern Europe and Asia. These birds were a massive tactical advantage for his men.

For the past few years, the police has caught carrier pigeons attempting to various contraband into prisons, like drugs, sim cards, even cell phones!

Let us see you send a cell phone via email!