Trained Pigeons facts

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The Coast Guard trained pigeons to assist in finding people lost at sea. They sat in a dome attached to a helicopter, pressing a lever after spotting life preservers or debris. They had a 90% success rate in initial trials.

how are carrier pigeons trained?

Before the start of the football season, an MIT student trained pigeons near the Harvard football stadium to respond to whistles as a prank. When the whistle was blown to begin the Harvard-Yale opening game, the field was overrun by the birds.

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what can pigeons be trained to do?

The US Coast Guard trained pigeons to do search and rescue missions. Although initial tests showed the pigeons had 93% success rate (compared to the 38% human success rate), the program was scrapped due to budget cuts.
Researchers trained pigeons to discriminate between paintings by Picasso and by Monet. They won the humorous Ig Nobel Prize in psychology for their work.
Over 16 million animals served in World War One. Both sides had large cavalries, camels were used in desert campaigns, dogs and pigeons carried messages, canaries were used to detect gas, and cats and dogs were trained to hunt rats in the trenches. Various animals were used as mascots too.
Owls have a reputation of being wise due to their large eyes, but are not smart enough to be trained - unlike parrots, hawks, and pigeons. They still have a complex brain, but it spends much of its time processing information from its optic nerves.
Pigeons can be trained to differentiate between benign and malignant breast cancers almost as well as the most practiced human consultants
In 2010, psychologists found that pigeons outperformed college students on a variant of the Monty Hall problem, a famously vexing math puzzle. Unlike the birds, the humans “failed to adopt optimal strategies, even with extensive training.”
Pigeons can be trained to distinguish normal and cancerous breast tissue just by looking at digitized slides
In 1995, three Japanese psychologists earned an Ig Nobel Prize for training pigeons to recognize the paintings of Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso and to distinguish between the painters.
Carrier pigeons were the most reliable communications tool during WWI: ~100,000 birds carried messages back-and-forth from the front with a success rate of >95%. Given their importance, pilots would carry them if they found any stranded behind enemy lines & Germans trained hawks to hunt them.
In WWII, a psychologist named B. F. Skinner trained pigeons to pilot missiles at enemy ships. The pigeons would peck at a visual feed of the ship, and an internal navigation system would steer the missile

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Trained pigeons can tell the difference between Picasso and Monet paintings. Upside-down images of Monet's paintings disrupted the discrimination, whereas inverted images of Picasso's did not.

Trained pigeons can tell the difference between the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet. - source

Trained pigeons can tell the difference between painting of Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet - source

During WWII, a research program tried to train pigeons to guide missiles. Pigeons would follow the image, pecking at it, which would move the screen on its pivots. The program was shutdown, with the lead researcher stating:"Our problem was no one would take us seriously."

Trained pigeons could tell the difference between a Picasso and Monet painting. The pigeons could distinguish a Picasso from a Monet. They could even tell when a Picasso painting was shown upside down. - source

When a dog is trained to detect drugs explosives contraband?

During WWII, Americans initiated Project Orcon which entailed a missile guidance system controlled by pigeons - in which the trained bird pecked at levers to regulate the direction of the explosive-laden object.

How were pigeons trained to deliver messages?

Mike Tyson has, trains, and breeds a collection of racing pigeons

During WW2, a bomb was designed that used trained pigeons as it's guidance system and struck with near perfect accuracy.

BF Skinner Trained Pigeons to Guide Missiles and Find People Lost at Sea

When a dog is trained to detect drugs explosives?

A study in which psychologists showed pigeons can be trained to discriminate between painting by Picasso and Monet, and even distinguish between the works of other impressionists (Renoir and Cezanne) and abstract painters (Matisse and Braque)

The first (US) guided missile was controlled by pigeons. Yes pigeons! The bird. Famous psychologist B. F. Skinner trained pigeons in Project Orcon to steer missiles towards Japanese War ships in 1944. Testing was very successful but it never saw a fight because some didn't trust the birds.

In 1942 pigeons were placed inside bombs and trained to steer them by pecking at a projected image of the target

How are homing pigeons trained?

In the late 1970s the US Coast Guard trained teams of pigeons to hunt for life rafts from boxes on the undersides of helicopters, by the end of the training the pigeons were correct 93% of the time compared to humans who spotted the life rafts correctly only 38% of the time

In ghettos there are people that train pigeons to "flip" whenever police enter the neighborhood

When white doves are released at ceremonies, they're not doves as most people think, but actually trained homing pigeons that return home immediately.

China is training 10,000 messenger pigeons to carry secret military letters in order to avoid cyber-security leaks.

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