Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for a vault episode. Deep in the Vault, I
Speaker 1: hear the fluttering of wings. Yeah, that's right, this is
Speaker 1: our episode Send an owl slash raven slash pigeon. Uh.
Speaker 1: This episode basically explores the actual use of pigeons to
Speaker 1: to relay messages from one point to another, but then
Speaker 1: also exploring the use of ravens and owls in our
Speaker 1: various fictions, namely, um, The Song of Ice and Fire
Speaker 1: by George R. Martin and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Uh.
Speaker 1: To what extent do these make sense? Could an owl
Speaker 1: actually deliver a message? How smart is it? Now? How
Speaker 1: capable of being trained is a now? And likewise, what's
Speaker 1: the situation with the raven? Uh? This is what These
Speaker 1: are the questions that this episode attempts to answer. We
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy Welcome Stuff to Blow your Mind, a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. You know Joe and
Speaker 1: my household. We're slap dab in the middle of Harry
Speaker 1: Potter manio. Yeah, you've been telling me all about it, dude. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We're reading our seven year old the books, we're making
Speaker 1: our way through the movies, and my son applies just
Speaker 1: an amazing level of focus and determination to all these
Speaker 1: Harry Potter Lego kits. Oh now, you gotta tell me
Speaker 1: about those, because I love Legos and I am hoping
Speaker 1: someday in my life to be able to play with
Speaker 1: Legos again. Oh well, yeah, the Lego kits are pretty great.
Speaker 1: They're not a sponsor, but I'm just saying there there
Speaker 1: are a lot of fun The Hogwarts especially is quite
Speaker 1: quite a kit. Uh. But you know, he also has
Speaker 1: a stuffed owl, which he has, of course named Hedwig
Speaker 1: after Harry potter Is owl. And at the same time
Speaker 1: when he goes to bed, my wife and I are
Speaker 1: currently enjoying the final season of Game of Thrones, as
Speaker 1: am I and my wife. Yeah, I see your current
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're cooked. Yeah, there won't be any spoilers
Speaker 1: in this episode, but but I'm glad that we're on
Speaker 1: the same wavelength. And uh, you know, and one day
Speaker 1: I think I'm I'm looking forward to actually finishing reading
Speaker 1: the books as well once they are all written. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so are you actually caught up to where the books
Speaker 1: are in the Song of Ice and Fire series? Am?
Speaker 1: I'm caught up and eagerly awaiting the subsequent volume. Me too,
Speaker 1: I've read them all and now it's been so long
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to go back and read them again
Speaker 1: before the next one. Kind of I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: hit the Wikipedia entries. So in the Wizarding World of
Speaker 1: the J. K. Rowland created the Magical Community, they use
Speaker 1: owls to send messages back and forth, and its sides beautiful,
Speaker 1: and it's a subtly magical part of the book, right,
Speaker 1: playing on their traditional ideas of witches and wizards having familiars,
Speaker 1: as well as the very properties of owls that make
Speaker 1: them seem mystical right there, silence, they're nocturnal habits, their
Speaker 1: wise appearance. Uh. But in reality, as we'll discuss, no
Speaker 1: one actually uses an owl to send messages in the
Speaker 1: real world. But the more general idea of using birds
Speaker 1: to send messages is not so magical and not so
Speaker 1: far fetched. I guess that's what we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about today. Yeah, and likewise George R. Martin's Song of
Speaker 1: Ice and Fire books, uh, and the HBO TV v
Speaker 1: TV adaptation Game of Thrones. Now, folks, if we call
Speaker 1: the books Game of Thrones today, don't get on our case. Right,
Speaker 1: It's just it's the same thing. It's just what we've
Speaker 1: been programmed to do at this point. But in both properties,
Speaker 1: ravens are the bird of choice for members of the
Speaker 1: Citadel to relay messages to and from various castles, cities,
Speaker 1: and important locations. Yeah, they're the email of wester Ros. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know it's it's described in the books
Speaker 1: that these clever messengers usually only function like real world
Speaker 1: messager pigeons. Right. They that that the summer smarter and
Speaker 1: capable of traveling to multiple locations. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: you're sending a message from one place to another, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right actually to without any spoilers to extremely comic
Speaker 1: effects sometimes in the TV show, especially where like it
Speaker 1: seems like somebody will write a message, put it on
Speaker 1: a raven, send it off and they get results within
Speaker 1: like a day when it was supposed to travel a
Speaker 1: thousand miles. I'm not quite sure exactly how that happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: things have to move a lot a lot faster in
Speaker 1: the TV series, right. I think this has led to
Speaker 1: a lot of memes where like ravens have jet packs
Speaker 1: on this well, and then they also have I believe
Speaker 1: there's an additional separate species, a white raven, that that
Speaker 1: used by the Citadel for particularly important messages. I don't
Speaker 1: recall that, but there's a lot of detail in the
Speaker 1: books that didn't even stick. I think I've had a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of time with Game of Thrones
Speaker 1: to to forget many different details myself. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think all this works nicely in the books in
Speaker 1: the TV series because it puts an alternative of universe
Speaker 1: kind of spin on everything, right, Like in your world
Speaker 1: it's a pigeon, but in in uh in wester Roast
Speaker 1: it is it is a raven. And then uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like some of the other spins that
Speaker 1: they do, like like having this predominantly polytheistic version of
Speaker 1: medieval Western culture. Uh So this alternate of you know,
Speaker 1: vision of how bloodlines and genetics work. Though I do
Speaker 1: think they're interesting. Not to turn this into it just
Speaker 1: a game of Thrones episode. There's some interesting parallels between
Speaker 1: the religions in the Game of Thrones world and uh,
Speaker 1: and the religions of Western Europe. Like, so you originally
Speaker 1: have these pagan, polytheistic religions. But I know, George R.
Speaker 1: Martin has commented that the Faith of the Seven in
Speaker 1: the books and the TV show is really an analogy
Speaker 1: for the Catholic Church even because it has you know,
Speaker 1: even it is considers itself a monotheistic religion, It has
Speaker 1: a trinity, it has many saints and other figures. And
Speaker 1: and he just said, well, I just went ahead and
Speaker 1: made them all gods. Yeah, he he had. He did
Speaker 1: a great job of taking things that were familiar and
Speaker 1: tweaking them just a little bit to where they still
Speaker 1: felt familiar. Like you did have to, you know, take
Speaker 1: a running start at understanding the religious world of Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones, but it was a little bit different, just
Speaker 1: just just a little bit skewed in a way that
Speaker 1: made it to uh, you know, resonate a little more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh. And likewise, the Ravens fit perfectly in this,
Speaker 1: you know, this grim dark setting because the raven, of course,
Speaker 1: is a bird that's associated with with darkness. And carnage,
Speaker 1: and so it makes sense that the characters would be
Speaker 1: using this bird to send their messages, as opposed to
Speaker 1: the peaceful dove or pigeons pecking bits of flesh from
Speaker 1: dead bodies on the battlefield. That's how the raven is
Speaker 1: often imagined. But the way the ravens are used in
Speaker 1: the book, as we've already alluded to, is actually very
Speaker 1: analogous to real life uses of messenger pigeons. That's right,
Speaker 1: messenger pigeons, carrier pigeons. Uh. This is an actual method
Speaker 1: that that we use and have used for thousands of
Speaker 1: years to deliver messages across long distances, um and and
Speaker 1: it's it's not really it's not like a magically trained pet.
Speaker 1: It's more of an animal that will dependently dependently return
Speaker 1: home after you transport it somewhere else and then let
Speaker 1: it free, which is a much less impressive trick, though
Speaker 1: still impressive. Yes, I mean, it would be pretty amazing
Speaker 1: if you could just like send one to another city
Speaker 1: on command and then it would come back, right. It's
Speaker 1: like imagine doing it with say a guerrilla from the
Speaker 1: local zoo, where like I want to send a message
Speaker 1: to the zoo where this guerrilla lives. Okay, well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take one of its guerrillas with me when I
Speaker 1: visit another city. You know, that will give the guerrilla
Speaker 1: the message let the guerrilla loose, and the guerrilla will
Speaker 1: of course return home, thus delivering the message. So I
Speaker 1: guess that's where you get the idea. You may have
Speaker 1: heard the phrase of homing pigeon. Yes, it is returning home.
Speaker 1: So here we are. We're talking about pigeons, we're talking
Speaker 1: about owls, and we're talking about ravens. We figured we
Speaker 1: we know that homing pigeons. This has been a subject
Speaker 1: that that numerous podcasts have covered. I know, Josh and
Speaker 1: Chuck covered homing pigeon a while back on their show.
Speaker 1: Oh that doesn't surprise me. Yeah, and uh, and so
Speaker 1: we we wanted to to to discuss them, but we
Speaker 1: figured this might spice it up a bit, to also
Speaker 1: discuss them in relation to the owls and the ravens
Speaker 1: of the world of Harry Potter and the world of
Speaker 1: wester Ros. And in doing so, we'll be able to
Speaker 1: highlight why the pigeon has worked so well for these
Speaker 1: purposes and why we use the pigeon, and likewise why
Speaker 1: we don't actually use ravens and owls. What is it
Speaker 1: about ravens and owls that that would make them ideal
Speaker 1: for this sort of work? And then also what you
Speaker 1: know prevents us from using them for this sort of
Speaker 1: work to begin with? Well, I say, let's go pigeon first. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go, so let's hit reality and then we'll dip
Speaker 1: our toes into the fantasy a bit. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: let's let's consider some of the you know, the the
Speaker 1: epic facts UH from the history of homing pigeons that
Speaker 1: I think UH should ground their use in a real
Speaker 1: world that feels as epic as anything from wester Ros uh. So, So,
Speaker 1: first of all, it seems that pigeons were originally domesticated
Speaker 1: for food UH in the Middle East and in Europe,
Speaker 1: much in the same way that the jungle foul that
Speaker 1: we now call it chicken was originally domesticated in India
Speaker 1: and East Asia. So they were domesticated for their meat,
Speaker 1: for their eggs, which a pigeon has tiny eggs, but
Speaker 1: you can't eat them. The pigeon, UH is maybe not
Speaker 1: as robust as a modern uh, you know, hormonally enhanced chicken,
Speaker 1: but it's still is edible. I mean again, if you've
Speaker 1: read the song Advice and firebooks, one of the common
Speaker 1: menu items at feasts and stuff is roast squab or
Speaker 1: stuffed squab. Of course squab would be like a young pigeon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can still find squab on on menus in
Speaker 1: various places. Now, when we're talking about homing pigeons, the
Speaker 1: homing pigeon is technically Columba Olivia domestica. That's the domestic
Speaker 1: version of the rock pigeon, which is just Columbo Olivia. Now,
Speaker 1: one interesting fact about the common pigeon, the rock pigeon,
Speaker 1: also known as the a dove, in their natural habitats,
Speaker 1: their cliff dwellers, they tend to live and nest on
Speaker 1: cliff faces and rock ledges, which probably at least partially
Speaker 1: explains why they thrive so well in modern urban landscapes
Speaker 1: full of buildings that function as artificial cliff faces. And
Speaker 1: I think we talked about this some with with our
Speaker 1: guest Jason Ward, who came on the show. Wants to
Speaker 1: talk about urban evolution, especially of birds. Absolutely a highly
Speaker 1: successful species, but back before their success was so guaranteed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were this this wonderful edible bird that you could
Speaker 1: stuff in cages pretty easily. And as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: people were you know, kept their birds, and they doing
Speaker 1: so prohibited from flying away. And as they traveled around
Speaker 1: with these birds, and then I'm assuming they probably discovered
Speaker 1: the curious, independable way that these birds could then return
Speaker 1: to their home nest across increasingly long distances. And as such,
Speaker 1: we have been using bird, these pigeons for thousands of
Speaker 1: years to deliver messages. Uh, it is you know, it
Speaker 1: is a is a pretty ancient practice, but it appears
Speaker 1: to emerge out of this original domestication for food. First
Speaker 1: to eat them and then you put them to work, right,
Speaker 1: which which you know that it sounds rather this is
Speaker 1: ultimately we're talking about very mundane use of the bird. Right,
Speaker 1: We're going to use it for eating, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: use it for delivering messages. But it's also worth noting
Speaker 1: that pigeons have sacred significance in many cultures, though we
Speaker 1: often refer to them in doves in that in these instances,
Speaker 1: at least in the English language, right, the pigeon and dove,
Speaker 1: this is the same thing. Yeah, I mean, we're talking
Speaker 1: about the about birds from the family Columbidae, which is
Speaker 1: doves and pigeons. Um. But you know, we can think
Speaker 1: to the roles of say, doves and Christian symbolism. Uh.
Speaker 1: And even as it's kind of a secular symbol of peace, right,
Speaker 1: releasing doves um. Uh, you know, to is you know,
Speaker 1: a symbolic act. Right. Likewise, we can go all the
Speaker 1: way back to ancient Sumerian Mesopotamia where we see the
Speaker 1: use of the dove as an associated animal of the
Speaker 1: goddess in Anna. Ah. We love Ananna on this show.
Speaker 1: But that's interesting because Anana has multiple valences. Anana can be,
Speaker 1: of course, like a fierce goddess of war who screams
Speaker 1: death through the rebel lands, or she can be, you know,
Speaker 1: like a peaceful goddess of fertility. She has kind of
Speaker 1: both meanings in different contexts. And I wonder which which
Speaker 1: way the dove comes in there? Is it like the
Speaker 1: way we associate doves with peace or is it the
Speaker 1: way that doves can be used to send messages and
Speaker 1: gather intelligence during war? Yeah? I mean as it just
Speaker 1: as a means of conveying information. It can serve both ends, right,
Speaker 1: But it doesn't really seem like this. You know, this
Speaker 1: prior relationship of domestication with the pitch and is ultimately
Speaker 1: what sets it up for use. Is the carrier bird
Speaker 1: um or earlier people domesticated them, live with them and
Speaker 1: picked up on their abilities, and really the only other
Speaker 1: bird they think, Think to the other birds that have
Speaker 1: a legacy of domestication, and uh and and in each
Speaker 1: one we can try to imagine to what extent they
Speaker 1: could have actually been used to carry messages. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have the chicken, it's not gonna work. The duck,
Speaker 1: the goose, that's the carrier chicken. Yeah, the messenger chicken.
Speaker 1: That would be like a good cartoon. Well, okay, so
Speaker 1: the chickens out the duck and the goose. I couldn't
Speaker 1: find any real discussions of this, but I mean, they
Speaker 1: are migratory birds, so it's it's it sounds possible. But
Speaker 1: are they Are they ever domesticated? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: guess they are sometimes. Well, yeah, I've seen them listed
Speaker 1: as as birds that we have domesticated in some cases,
Speaker 1: likewise the goose, the guinea fowl, the turkey, canaries, and finches.
Speaker 1: But but of these, the domestication of the chicken, the duck,
Speaker 1: the goose, and the turkey. Those go back thousands of years,
Speaker 1: but canaries only go back to the fifteenth century, and
Speaker 1: the finch to the eighteenth century. But you know, to
Speaker 1: put ourselves back in in sent shoes on this right
Speaker 1: as as one presumably you know, picks up on the
Speaker 1: ability of the of the pigeon to carry messages. Just
Speaker 1: think of the advantage, uh, in a world where message
Speaker 1: delivery is only as fast as a human or a
Speaker 1: horse and rider can can travel across either open terrain
Speaker 1: or more likely a series of winding paths or roads. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, we take for granted now that we have
Speaker 1: wired or wireless communication that can send information electronically or whatever.
Speaker 1: I mean. Back then, of message had to be physically
Speaker 1: taken one way or another. Either you tell it to
Speaker 1: a person and they go deliver it in person, or
Speaker 1: it had to be carried by hand. Yeah, you had
Speaker 1: to have a runner carrying it or carrying it to
Speaker 1: the next runner. Um. Oh and then yeah, yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're going from point A to point B, you're probably
Speaker 1: not able to go in a straight line. But the
Speaker 1: bird can. The bird can fly, you know, literally as
Speaker 1: the as the crow flies. Yeah, the bird also has
Speaker 1: the advantage that this is seen sometimes in the Song
Speaker 1: of Fire series, where say, if your castle is under
Speaker 1: siege and no person, no human messenger would likely get
Speaker 1: by without being captured, a bird probably could get by. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bird can leave a besieged city and go relay
Speaker 1: a message. Um, you know, they might try and and
Speaker 1: shoot it out of the sky with a with an arrow.
Speaker 1: But that's why you have multiple pigeons, I imagine, or
Speaker 1: multiple owls or ravens in your fantasy set of treatments.
Speaker 1: Birds can also carry messages quickly over water, that's right.
Speaker 1: Humans can't or I guess maybe could by boat. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's easy to just to sort of focus on
Speaker 1: the sort of the primitive nature of tying a message
Speaker 1: to an animal with and and and just forget the
Speaker 1: tremendous freedom of movement that a bird like a pigeon has, uh.
Speaker 1: And then in terms of speed with a pigeon, we're
Speaker 1: talking speeds of of like fifty to sixty miles per
Speaker 1: hour and up to record speeds. And I think this
Speaker 1: is you know, when you're really pushing, when you're racing them,
Speaker 1: you can get into the low nineties. Horses on the
Speaker 1: other hand, Uh, you're only going to reach at the
Speaker 1: mid fifties. And that's going at full gallup. And that's
Speaker 1: like a world record for horse. Yeah, that's like a
Speaker 1: common that's like really going. And uh and again, the
Speaker 1: chances of you being able to send a message by
Speaker 1: horse at top speed, at record speed in a straight line,
Speaker 1: like on this magical highway that you've built between Fortress
Speaker 1: A and Fortress B, it's just not It doesn't stack
Speaker 1: up against the power, the the the message delivering power
Speaker 1: of the pigeon. So to give everybody you know, some
Speaker 1: more ideas about it, just that the history the legacy
Speaker 1: of of carrier pigeon use. I was looking at the
Speaker 1: Hallowed History of the Carrier Pigeon by Mary Bloom from
Speaker 1: the New York Times two thousand four, and so some
Speaker 1: of the high points of the author mentioned here, and
Speaker 1: I believe this was uncovering a museum exhibit about the
Speaker 1: carrier pigeon. But we have, like an addition to mythical
Speaker 1: uh stories of in Anna and her association with the
Speaker 1: with the pigeon or dove, you also have biblical accounts
Speaker 1: such as uh Noah releasing doves or pigeons. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was to test whether the floodwaters of the Great Flood
Speaker 1: had abated. I think it's in Genesis chapter eight where
Speaker 1: uh Noah releases multiple doves or either the same dub
Speaker 1: multiple times or multiple doves to go out and see
Speaker 1: if it can land somewhere. At first, it goes out
Speaker 1: and it can't find anywhere to land, and it comes
Speaker 1: back to him. The second time it goes out and
Speaker 1: it brings back a branch, and that means the waters
Speaker 1: must have receded from somewhere. In the third time it
Speaker 1: goes out, it just stays gone and never returns. So
Speaker 1: if you love a dove, set it free. So the
Speaker 1: ancient Romans used pigeons for chariot races to tell owners
Speaker 1: how their entries had placed. Genghis Khan established pigeon relay
Speaker 1: points across Asia and much of eastern Europe. Charlemagne made
Speaker 1: pigeon raising the exclusive privilege of nobility. Pigeons were used
Speaker 1: for military communication well into World War One, when the
Speaker 1: Germans rolled out carrier carrier pigeons with cameras that were
Speaker 1: soon replaced by reconnaissance planes by the end of the
Speaker 1: Under the war France had mobilized thirty thousand pigeons, and
Speaker 1: they had declared that anyone impeding their flight could be
Speaker 1: sentenced to death. There's actually a famous story from World
Speaker 1: War One, I believe about a group of Allied soldiers
Speaker 1: who had come under friendly fire from artillery and only
Speaker 1: managed to communicate to their allies that you know, like
Speaker 1: stopped shelling us by accident by the use of a
Speaker 1: carrier pigeons, I'll saved many lives. Pigeons have been used
Speaker 1: to transport blood samples from remote regions regions of Britain
Speaker 1: and France. In eastern India, they were used for communication
Speaker 1: between remote police out outposts, and as of at least
Speaker 1: last year, at least one of these uh lines was
Speaker 1: still in use. The US has used pigeons to spot shipwrecks.
Speaker 1: Drug drug traffickers have used pigeons seemingly around the world.
Speaker 1: I was looking up various stories about this, and you know,
Speaker 1: I was finding hits for um, North, South and Central
Speaker 1: America as well as in the Middle East. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously you're not going to send like an entire brick
Speaker 1: of hashish up into the at a pigeon, but if
Speaker 1: you want to send a small amount of something like
Speaker 1: across the border or police area. Yeah, like you take
Speaker 1: a pigeon from its home, attached the drugs to it,
Speaker 1: and then let it fly home. And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: some people have done. Uh. This is a fun account
Speaker 1: that my wife shared with me. She was remembering a
Speaker 1: West Virginia whitewater rafting place from sort of like the
Speaker 1: predigital photo age, and they used pigeons. So what they
Speaker 1: did is, um, you know, you're going on this whitewater
Speaker 1: rafting ride, right and uh uh nowadays we just take
Speaker 1: this for granted. Right, You ride some sort of a
Speaker 1: ride like a roller coaster, and at the end they
Speaker 1: sell you a picture of yourself enjoying the ride, and
Speaker 1: of course now we do it was just digital photography,
Speaker 1: but this particular White Water rapid place, the way they
Speaker 1: did it is they had a photographer with a long
Speaker 1: lens up on a hillside where they could get a
Speaker 1: good shot of the river. Uh. They would snap your
Speaker 1: picture as you were going down the river, and then
Speaker 1: they would take the film. They would attach you to
Speaker 1: the homing pigeon, send the pigeon like to the end
Speaker 1: of the river where the pickup is. They would develop
Speaker 1: the film and then they would sell you the picture,
Speaker 1: because you know this is a course of that's when
Speaker 1: you want to sell the picture, right, you're just getting
Speaker 1: off the rafting rides, are excited like, oh that was awesome.
Speaker 1: I didn't die, it was great, and then there's the
Speaker 1: picture ready to go like magic, and you pay for it. Now,
Speaker 1: that probably wasn't even possible until like sellularly to acetate film. Right,
Speaker 1: try to attach it to garat type plate to your pigeons.
Speaker 1: Work to understand that joke. Make sure you listen to
Speaker 1: our series of episodes on our other podcast, Invention, about
Speaker 1: the invention of photography. Those have been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: If you're not listening to Invention yet, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Go listen? Yeah, and you can check out the website
Speaker 1: at invention pod dot com. Okay, I got one for you.
Speaker 1: You ever wonder about the origin of the term pigeonhole. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'd never thought about it, but now I am. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pigeonhole as a verb, right, like I don't want to
Speaker 1: be pigeonholed as just another whatever. I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: how I guess it means, like, uh, it's sort of
Speaker 1: like the the idea of being type cast, right, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be pinned down in this kind of
Speaker 1: narrowly defined space. Well, apparently this expression has a very
Speaker 1: literal origin in the domestic pigeon raising trade. It comes
Speaker 1: from when pigeons used to be given like individual holes
Speaker 1: or recesses to nest in. And then after that it
Speaker 1: later came to have another definition of quote one of
Speaker 1: a series of small open compartments, as in a desk,
Speaker 1: cabinet or the like, used for filing or sorting papers. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so that's like a standard definition which I think
Speaker 1: morphed further into the more abstract metaphor of having your
Speaker 1: person pigeonholed into a narrow slot. Interesting. Yeah, I'd never
Speaker 1: thought about it before, but that makes perfect sense. And
Speaker 1: that metaphorical definition came about, I think in the eighteen
Speaker 1: sixties and the mid late nineteenth century. Alright, so why
Speaker 1: how do pigeons carry out these impressive feats of speedy delivery? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why them? Why not some other bird? Why not owl?
Speaker 1: Why not owls? Why not ravens? Why not rats? Why
Speaker 1: not the you know, than the neighborhood house cat. And
Speaker 1: I think you might be able to answer this question
Speaker 1: two different ways that we could that we can get
Speaker 1: into more as the episode goes on, But one explanation
Speaker 1: might be rooted in the sort of innate tendencies or
Speaker 1: abilities of each of these animals, and another answer might
Speaker 1: be more rooted in just accidents of history. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. Like we already touched on the fact
Speaker 1: that the pigeon was domesticated seemingly originally for food, and
Speaker 1: so that kind of like provided the groundwork for further
Speaker 1: domestic uses of the animal. Yes, but it is certainly
Speaker 1: true that pigeons have some very impressive qualities when it
Speaker 1: comes to navigation and long distance travel. Right, their navigational
Speaker 1: abilities are essentially twofold. So first of all, they have
Speaker 1: a compass system and this tells them which direction they're
Speaker 1: headed inn and the sun, the position of the Sun
Speaker 1: and the Earth's magnetic field make this possible. But then
Speaker 1: they also have a map system, which tells them where
Speaker 1: they are in relation to where they want to go now.
Speaker 1: And it's this ability that is a lot more controversial
Speaker 1: that we have sort of competing hypotheses, uh, competing theories
Speaker 1: about how they're actually working. So it's not totally settled
Speaker 1: exactly all of the methods that pigeons have to navigate
Speaker 1: the way they do and find their way back home. Right,
Speaker 1: there's still there's still research ongoing as to what's going
Speaker 1: on and and complicating all of this is the release
Speaker 1: site bias. This is when birds go off in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction at release, leading investigators to ask, well, what's
Speaker 1: happening in these cases to disrupt their return? What can
Speaker 1: we learn about the functionality by looking at the disruption events?
Speaker 1: And so the basic theories for how the mapping system
Speaker 1: works are as follows. First, there's the smell theory UH
Speaker 1: so odors carried on the wind allow the pigeons to
Speaker 1: map their way home, and studies have shown that the
Speaker 1: atmosphere does contain the necessary olfactory information UH and pigeons
Speaker 1: have been observed to get disoriented when their sense of
Speaker 1: smell is impaired or when they don't have access to
Speaker 1: natural winds at their home nest. And then there's the
Speaker 1: Earth's magnetic field lines so like there is a theory
Speaker 1: that there's some kind of inherent magneto reception in the
Speaker 1: birds right as a Cordula Vi Mora and Michael M.
Speaker 1: Walker pointed out in a two thousand nine, studying the
Speaker 1: proceedings of the Royal Society b Biological Sciences. Quote, pigeons
Speaker 1: may derive spatial information from the magnetic field at the
Speaker 1: release site that could be used to estimate their current
Speaker 1: position relative to their loft. Okay, so this sounds like
Speaker 1: it might especially help with like initial orientation towards their
Speaker 1: target destination. Absolutely and again working with that compass system.
Speaker 1: So these two things working together. Now, there is also
Speaker 1: a third theory that I ran across, and this one's
Speaker 1: not as big as the other two, but to just
Speaker 1: get every everyone, you know, an idea of some of
Speaker 1: the alternative ideas that are being explored here. Geophysicist John
Speaker 1: Hagstrom has this theory that they follow ultra low frequency
Speaker 1: sounds back towards their lofts and that that this is
Speaker 1: why certain areas can confuse them and throw them off.
Speaker 1: He argues that topographic disruptions and ultrasound account for why
Speaker 1: some pigeons are thrown off track in known disruption disruption zones,
Speaker 1: such as in parts of upstate New York. That was
Speaker 1: the region that the UH that Hagstrom was actually looking
Speaker 1: at and conducting. You know, some experiments in UH and
Speaker 1: homing pigeons, they can hear sounds as low as point
Speaker 1: zero five her hurts, so so they do have you know,
Speaker 1: they do have impressive hearing that that space. Yeah. However,
Speaker 1: it's also been pointed out particularly I was looking at
Speaker 1: a National Geographic article New Theory on how homing pigeons
Speaker 1: find home by Jane J. Lee Uh pointed out that
Speaker 1: the given pigeon my use uh, you know, either the
Speaker 1: smell or the magnetic field uh mapping system. It might
Speaker 1: just depend on where their rays uh, you know, leaning
Speaker 1: on magnetic fields in some cases, smell on the others
Speaker 1: other areas, or perhaps leaning on ultrasound if that is
Speaker 1: in fact one of the methods at their disposal. Well,
Speaker 1: and that would sort of make sense given what we
Speaker 1: know about our senses that we use for navigation. I mean,
Speaker 1: it would depend on where you were that you were
Speaker 1: trying to find your way to. Right, Like, some places,
Speaker 1: it might be good to listen for traffic or something
Speaker 1: if you don't know if you're like trying to get
Speaker 1: back to a trafficked area and an otherwise wilderness like area,
Speaker 1: or it might make more sense to just look with
Speaker 1: your eyes and see what kind of place you're going to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in all of these cases, I keep trying
Speaker 1: to put myself in the shoes of the pigeon and
Speaker 1: imagine somebody like sticking me in a cage, transporting me, say, um,
Speaker 1: you know two counties over, releasing me in the wild
Speaker 1: and giving me a message to return to my house
Speaker 1: with to my house us uh, and I would probably
Speaker 1: just die in the woods in those casas. So it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's we look at something like the pigeon,
Speaker 1: an animal that is not um held in high esteem
Speaker 1: by most people. You know. We we think of pigeons,
Speaker 1: we think of essentially winged rats in the city, and
Speaker 1: we we we may not stop to realize, you know,
Speaker 1: what kind of amazing navigational abilities they have, but they do. Uh.
Speaker 1: They the pigeons can do, can do these feats that
Speaker 1: that humans would be completely lost to try and replicate.
Speaker 1: Do you think the pigeons internal uh navigational computer is
Speaker 1: as annoying as the navigation app on most phones or
Speaker 1: like you know, uh GPS devices. Um, I would think not,
Speaker 1: because it's a part of them, right. I mean that
Speaker 1: the annoying thing about GPS technology is that it is
Speaker 1: external and uh, it's it's something we have to divert
Speaker 1: attention to or and or you know, we we draw
Speaker 1: our phone out of that little cradle, or horsing around
Speaker 1: with it while going down the interstate. I don't know
Speaker 1: what brand it was, but there was one I used
Speaker 1: to interact with fairly. It wasn't mine, it was somebody else's.
Speaker 1: But uh, but it was incredibly passive aggressive, so like
Speaker 1: anytime you missed a turn, you would almost hear it,
Speaker 1: like get kind of huffy. It would go recalculating. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're all sorts of weird quirks like that. They've gotten
Speaker 1: a lot better, but yeah, it's still they don't Still
Speaker 1: they still don't feel like a natural instinct by any stretch. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously we could spend more time here talking about the
Speaker 1: navigational abilities of pigeons and and certainly the way that
Speaker 1: pigeons and other animals, uh, you know, seemingly interact with
Speaker 1: the magnetic field, but we want to take a quick
Speaker 1: break here. When we come back, we're gonna move on
Speaker 1: to the next animal. In this episode, we're going to
Speaker 1: discuss the owls of Harry Potter, but more specifically the
Speaker 1: owls of the real world. Thank alright, we're back, all right, Robert,
Speaker 1: give it to me straight. What are the what are
Speaker 1: the chances the fighting chances of a military force that
Speaker 1: wants to deliver messages between its ranks by the use
Speaker 1: of war owls. Well, it depends if we're talking about
Speaker 1: muggles or we're talking about members of the wizard In Community.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about real real world here. Well, just to
Speaker 1: take the pigeons of World War One replace them with owls.
Speaker 1: What happens, um, Well, then the messages don't get delivered
Speaker 1: for starters, because I think ultimately an important part of
Speaker 1: this is the of course, the legacy of using the pigeons.
Speaker 1: But the question that the bigger question is what what
Speaker 1: if there had been no pigeons? What if for some
Speaker 1: reason early on people had gone the direction of the
Speaker 1: wizard In community in the Harry Potter novels and had said,
Speaker 1: let's use owls. Let's let's not focus on any other animals.
Speaker 1: Let's focus on this species or the species of owl.
Speaker 1: Can we use this animal to deliver our messages? Right?
Speaker 1: Whether rain or snow or dead of night, will this
Speaker 1: owl deliver your message? Right? And I have to say
Speaker 1: when we we set out to do this episode. My
Speaker 1: initial suspected answer was going to be, no, they can't.
Speaker 1: And I suspected that the reason was going to be
Speaker 1: that owls are dumb, that owls are like really dumb
Speaker 1: because and this is this is like, this is pre research,
Speaker 1: but I've found that multiple bird shows that I go to,
Speaker 1: you know, bird shows or like wildlife rescue places, places
Speaker 1: where they have say an owl that can't be rereleased
Speaker 1: into the wild because it has a damaged wing, and
Speaker 1: so it's used for educational purposes. Multiple times. Uh, the
Speaker 1: you know, the individual caring for the creatures has pointed
Speaker 1: out that, well, this owl is really dumb. It's just
Speaker 1: not a smart creature. Um. And so you know, we
Speaker 1: have their their limits on what we can expect from
Speaker 1: from it. That's strange. I tend to find that people
Speaker 1: who work directly with animals are tending they tend to
Speaker 1: air on the side of overstating the animals intelligence. Well,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean to speak for every like wildlife
Speaker 1: rescu you um individual out there or bird show worker,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But you know, it stood out to me,
Speaker 1: and it probably stood out to me because there is
Speaker 1: this idea of the wise owl. You know, um, you
Speaker 1: know it's it's firmly established not only in pop culture,
Speaker 1: but in our mythic traditions. The owl was the bird
Speaker 1: of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. They were thought
Speaker 1: to see the future, and of course they're nocturnal nature
Speaker 1: in their silent flight made them creatures of occult fascination.
Speaker 1: The Romans saw them as portents of doom. Uh. They
Speaker 1: fulfill a number of roles among the native peoples of
Speaker 1: North and South America, ranging from dire omens to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, actual spirits of the dead. And in some
Speaker 1: some traditions the owl is an evil creature uh. And
Speaker 1: in other times that you know, it's associated with the goddess,
Speaker 1: as in Athena's case, or in Welsh mythology, the goddess
Speaker 1: Blotta wed is associated with the owl. It is not
Speaker 1: hard at all to imagine how owls could come to
Speaker 1: occupy a place of like terrifying spiritual power, because have
Speaker 1: you ever been out in the woods at night and
Speaker 1: heard an owl? It's I mean, it's a cliche now
Speaker 1: because it's in the movies and all that, but in
Speaker 1: person it is freaky. Yes, yeah, and then they have
Speaker 1: enormous eyes which you can't help but lock eyes with
Speaker 1: the owl, and it's it's intimidating to to look at them.
Speaker 1: They're just in there, just fascinating, impressive specimens. Um. And
Speaker 1: in terms of pop culture, who can forget the great
Speaker 1: owl from the Secretive Nim It's so good. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: kind of Wilford Brimley faced owl. It had some heavy
Speaker 1: brows and mustache from what I recall, but it also
Speaker 1: glowing eyes. Yeah. Um. And you know, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of different types of owls. There's something like two
Speaker 1: hundred species roughly. They're amazing creatures. And there's somewhere in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of two hundred different species of owl. Um.
Speaker 1: By the way, possibly the largest owl ever to walk
Speaker 1: the earth the Cuban giant owl, which stood about three
Speaker 1: foot seven or one point one meters tall and was
Speaker 1: either flightless or nearly flight A giant flightless owl, So
Speaker 1: what was it like a like a raptor that like
Speaker 1: run around along the ground and snatch up its prey
Speaker 1: I be least, so yeah, and you know, we could
Speaker 1: possibly have achieved you know, very limited flight, much in
Speaker 1: the same way a chicken may fly, but but owls
Speaker 1: are are specialized killers. They're they're mostly solitary creatures. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot of social complexity to their brainload. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's more about the spotting uh
Speaker 1: and and perceiving prey and then stealthily swooping down on
Speaker 1: them and uh and um and snatching them up. But
Speaker 1: but I was, I was looking into this more and
Speaker 1: I found a book, uh titled The Science of Harry
Speaker 1: Potter from two thousand two by Roger high Field. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a pretty cool book obviously, Um, you know
Speaker 1: it's it's been out for a few years. But um,
Speaker 1: so this would have only been like the earliest Harry
Speaker 1: Potter books, right, Not that the use of owls really,
Speaker 1: you know, change as much in the series. It's pretty stationary.
Speaker 1: Owls are just how you send messages. But the major
Speaker 1: reason he says that owls wouldn't be ideal for this
Speaker 1: sort of work is that most of them are rather setentary,
Speaker 1: so they don't migrate, uh and migrate Harry skills, you know,
Speaker 1: would be ideal for the sort of messaging work. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like if you've heard I know
Speaker 1: you and I have heard this uh presented and kind
Speaker 1: of like a self defense uh scenario by saying that
Speaker 1: if if someone is looking to say rob you on
Speaker 1: the street, uh, they have a remember the term uses.
Speaker 1: They have a small office, they have a small work area,
Speaker 1: and you want to get out of that work area
Speaker 1: because there's like just a you know, it's like a
Speaker 1: pickpocket or robbers working like within like one street worth
Speaker 1: of area. And that's the similar case with a lot
Speaker 1: of predatory organisms. Uh. They ultimately have a small zone
Speaker 1: in which they operate. They operate very well in that zone,
Speaker 1: but you out of that zone and you might be
Speaker 1: in the clear. Now, that might be a good point
Speaker 1: about the owls not being migratory and being fairly sedentary.
Speaker 1: But then again, I believe pigeons are non migratory or
Speaker 1: at least most in most cases non migratory, and yet
Speaker 1: they have this powerful homing and messaging ability. And then
Speaker 1: also in high field does acknowledge that, well, you do
Speaker 1: have some owls that are migratory, so you have I
Speaker 1: think two out of the five native UK owl species
Speaker 1: are migratory and nature and in theory could handle the
Speaker 1: ranges involved in most Potter World letters. Um. And they
Speaker 1: have great eyesight which would be useful as well. So
Speaker 1: we think of like the ways that these uh you
Speaker 1: know that that that have given messenger species would find
Speaker 1: the places that needs to go. Well, the owl has
Speaker 1: excellent eyesight, could be it would be very useful. Now
Speaker 1: as for their brain power, um he he pointed out
Speaker 1: that there had not been a lot of systematic study
Speaker 1: of owl brain power. But this would have been two
Speaker 1: thousand two, right, but he said, but he also acknowledged that,
Speaker 1: you know, there have been some some work in you know,
Speaker 1: looking at the memory of barn owls, specifically by Eric
Speaker 1: Knudsen at Stanford University, and that research seemed to show
Speaker 1: that they did have solid working memories. Um. While on
Speaker 1: the other hand, some owl species were considered to be
Speaker 1: quote rather dim due to their the predatory niche that
Speaker 1: they depended on. Now, but of course, in all of this, anytime,
Speaker 1: we're talking about animal intelligence, where it's always a bit unfair, right,
Speaker 1: because ultimately a given species is as intelligent as it
Speaker 1: needs to be for what it does, right. And I mean,
Speaker 1: even given that caveat, I think we have learned a
Speaker 1: lot more about bird intelligence just in the past couple
Speaker 1: of decades than we knew before. Like, uh, it is
Speaker 1: becoming increasingly clear how smart corvids are, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that when we get to ravens in the next section.
Speaker 1: But we didn't always know everything we know now about
Speaker 1: bird intelligence. I think the picture is becoming clearer that
Speaker 1: the birds are much smarter than we have long thought,
Speaker 1: though not every bird is equally more intelligent than we
Speaker 1: have long thought, right, I mean it ultimately is a
Speaker 1: lot is going to depend on what that that particular bird,
Speaker 1: or in this case, what that owl does. UM. For instance,
Speaker 1: I was looking around at some UM, some some other
Speaker 1: some actual studies on this UM two thousand thirteen study
Speaker 1: from the International Journal of Comparative Psychology found that the
Speaker 1: great gray owl or Stricts nebulosa, which that's one of
Speaker 1: my favorites. There, that's that's I mean, that's that sounds
Speaker 1: like a spell from Harry Potter. Um. These particular owls
Speaker 1: didn't do so hot and cognitive ability tests, they said
Speaker 1: to quote, our results suggest that the owl's failed to
Speaker 1: comprehend the physics underlying the object relationships involved in the
Speaker 1: task presented. But then again has pointed out in any
Speaker 1: two thousand four study published in Nature from Levy Duncan
Speaker 1: and Levin's burrowing owls or Atheny Cunicularia, which is another
Speaker 1: nice one. Uh. They use dung as a tool, or
Speaker 1: at least they use dung as bait to a track
Speaker 1: that dung beetles, which are a favorite prey. But you
Speaker 1: could would that be a like novel or cognitively discovered
Speaker 1: behavior or is that more probably like an instinct? I
Speaker 1: don't know, but they they they were framing it in
Speaker 1: terms of, you know, this is a potential tool use.
Speaker 1: That is, you know, and granted any time your tool
Speaker 1: is dung, these deasbit I mean, it's not quite the
Speaker 1: same as using a uh you know, a crafted twig
Speaker 1: uh to to pull grubs out of a out of
Speaker 1: a log or something. Just because it's dune doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's not a tool. Yeah, but I mean it still
Speaker 1: works for him. So, I mean, ultimately, high Field had
Speaker 1: argued that, well, maybe maybe the NOWL could be used
Speaker 1: for such purposes, and I think, uh, you know, based
Speaker 1: on some of the other research we're looking at, it
Speaker 1: does seem like the NOWL could pull off some of
Speaker 1: the feats involved. Well, I think one of the big
Speaker 1: questions that you would need to ask about whether a
Speaker 1: bird could be trained as some kind of messenger would
Speaker 1: be how well do they respond to training right and
Speaker 1: to domestic domestication. I mean, sadly, the popularity of the
Speaker 1: Harry Potter books and movies reportedly caused an increase in
Speaker 1: the trafficking of pet owls, which J. K. Rowling has
Speaker 1: is vocally condemned. By the way, do not go out
Speaker 1: and try and buy a pet owl just because you
Speaker 1: like Harry Potter. Um. But one of the important cases
Speaker 1: here is that that outside of the magical world or
Speaker 1: the realm of professional wildlife rescue efforts, owls should not
Speaker 1: be kept in cages and they're you know, they're not
Speaker 1: going to deliver your mail for you. But but more
Speaker 1: to the point that, you know, handling pigeons is one thing.
Speaker 1: Stuffing them in and out of cages by hand, it's
Speaker 1: one thing. But an owl has some pretty vicious talents
Speaker 1: that can certainly send you to the hospital. So owls
Speaker 1: are just generally not good candidates for domestication right outside
Speaker 1: of a magical um you know, fantasy series. Uh, it
Speaker 1: doesn't say like the talents alone would give me. Pause. Um,
Speaker 1: if you you know, look up if you're if you're
Speaker 1: curious about this, do a Google image search on like
Speaker 1: owl related injuries. You'll find some nice wipes and slices
Speaker 1: here and there, and it'll be enough to make you think, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we should leave the owls alone as much as possible.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we will talk about ravens as messengers. Thank alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: We've talked about real world homing pigeons. We've talked about
Speaker 1: the owls of Harry Potter, and to what extent the
Speaker 1: owls of the real world could or could not match
Speaker 1: up to their to to the sort of message delivering
Speaker 1: service that we see in the Harry Potter novels. They
Speaker 1: don't seem like great candidates. I think, yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: like you're better sticking off sticking with the pigeon, unless
Speaker 1: you have the magic to make it possible. Uh So,
Speaker 1: let's turn now to Game of Thrones, to wester Roast
Speaker 1: and the use of ravens. Why are we not using
Speaker 1: ravens And if we really wanted to, could we use
Speaker 1: ravens to deliver our messages? Uh? This one I think
Speaker 1: the prospects are different, but maybe a little bit better
Speaker 1: than owl. So you mentioned in mythology earlier that, uh,
Speaker 1: you talked about the doves of the Noah story in
Speaker 1: the Book of Genesis. You know, Noah releases doves and
Speaker 1: eventually they let him know that all the waters are
Speaker 1: gone from the earth. But don't forget, there's another part
Speaker 1: of the story. This very strange doesn't necessarily really seem
Speaker 1: to add up to anything, but Noah actually sends out
Speaker 1: a raven. First. It's kind of hard to tell what
Speaker 1: the raven is supposed to be doing in the story
Speaker 1: when it starts off by saying, then it came about
Speaker 1: the end of forty days, so it's been you know,
Speaker 1: forty days and forty nights of raining. At the end
Speaker 1: of forty days that Noah opened the window of the
Speaker 1: arc which he had made, and he sent out a
Speaker 1: raven and it flew here and there until the water
Speaker 1: was dried up from the earth. And then after that
Speaker 1: it just goes straight into the story with the doves. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that's confusing. I'm not quite sure what's happening there.
Speaker 1: I do know that there is some uh, there's some
Speaker 1: theories about the version of the story of the Great
Speaker 1: Flood that have that say that it's actually at least
Speaker 1: two different original stories that have essentially been edited together
Speaker 1: in the version that we have of the Book of Genesis.
Speaker 1: So it could this could reflect different versions of the
Speaker 1: same story just sort of being stitched together. But I
Speaker 1: don't know that. So, like one of them is the
Speaker 1: George R. Martin, Yes, exactly. It was never finished, so
Speaker 1: they had to dislike slap it together with this other
Speaker 1: version of the story. Yeah, so some other author is like,
Speaker 1: I don't like the raven I'm gonna do doves, okay,
Speaker 1: But they also didn't want to throw anything away, so
Speaker 1: the ravens still there. But yeah, anyway, that's one of
Speaker 1: those interesting little textual mysteries. Uh so, but yeah, the
Speaker 1: question would ravens be good messenger birds as in Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones. Now, in the world of George R. Martin's
Speaker 1: Song of Ice and Fire and the TV show Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones, the people of Westeros they use ravens mainly
Speaker 1: to send long distance messages. Like we're talking about much
Speaker 1: very very comparable to the way people have used messenger pigeons.
Speaker 1: There's a scene where Master Aim and the the master,
Speaker 1: like the sort of uh learned person at the up
Speaker 1: at the wall tells John snow quote, doves and pigeons
Speaker 1: can also be trained to carry messages, though the raven
Speaker 1: is a stronger, flyer, larger, bolder, far more clever, better
Speaker 1: able to defend itself against hawks. So I think we
Speaker 1: should keep that in mind, and we'll come back to
Speaker 1: it later to see whether Master Raymond's mostly or not
Speaker 1: on the money there. The first thing we should look at,
Speaker 1: of course, is whether in fact ravens are far more clever.
Speaker 1: And I think the answer to this is a resounding yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this was I guess before we went into the research,
Speaker 1: my suspicion was they might be too clever like that
Speaker 1: that and this may be you know, unfounded bias, but
Speaker 1: it was like, maybe maybe the owl is too dumb,
Speaker 1: maybe though the raven is too smart in the pigeon
Speaker 1: is just this perfect uh uh you know a mix
Speaker 1: of skill and uh in navigational ability. But also it's
Speaker 1: not gonna, you know, get bored and curious on the way.
Speaker 1: I can totally see why you would think that, but
Speaker 1: I don't think that's what I would think. After the
Speaker 1: research for this episode, I think that that sort of
Speaker 1: underestimates owls a bit, maybe overestimates pigeons and ravens and
Speaker 1: and the unruling nous of intelligence, because it is the
Speaker 1: case that for many very intelligent animals it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: manifest as like a surliness and rebellious nous. I mean,
Speaker 1: often very intelligent animals can respond well to training and conditioning,
Speaker 1: though often they respond in ways that are unpredictable to you,
Speaker 1: which is that's an interesting thing we'll get to in
Speaker 1: a minute about ravens. So ravens are corvids. They're a
Speaker 1: family of birds, containing many other kinds such as crows, jays,
Speaker 1: and magpies. Both corvids in general and ravens in particular, have,
Speaker 1: especially in recent years, but for a long time, been
Speaker 1: known to be extremely intelligent, and especially in recent years,
Speaker 1: we've gotten these studies that show these startling displays of
Speaker 1: intelligence and la conditions. And there are tons of examples
Speaker 1: of this. If you want a whole episode focused on
Speaker 1: this subject, go back to the one we did a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago called the Unsettling Depths of Bird Intelligence.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was a good one, and that we
Speaker 1: also talked a little mythology in that one. I remember
Speaker 1: Hoogan and Moon and oh yeah, the Norse mythology that
Speaker 1: represents aspects of what Odin's memory, his thoughts and his memory.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, And we also talked about it with Jason
Speaker 1: Ward when he came on the show to talk about
Speaker 1: the Birds of the City. But yeah, there's just so
Speaker 1: many interesting stories about what corvid's and ravens in particular
Speaker 1: can do. Just one recent example I was reading about
Speaker 1: about the intelligence of ravens in particular came from a
Speaker 1: couple of researchers at Sweden's Lunda University named Can Kabadii
Speaker 1: and Matthias os Fath, who did a study where they
Speaker 1: showed really intelligent, interesting forethought, or at least what seems
Speaker 1: like evidence of it in ravens. So it's already been
Speaker 1: demonstrated many times that corvids, like crows and ravens can
Speaker 1: use tools, and that's one of the hallmarks of complex intelligence,
Speaker 1: once thought to belong to primates alone. You know, if
Speaker 1: you go back and look at old textbooks, it's like
Speaker 1: only humans and the great apes can use tools. But
Speaker 1: nowadays corvids and certain occupy take issue with that. Oh yes, certainly.
Speaker 1: And one of the interesting things about this to me
Speaker 1: is that tool using suggests that if you go way
Speaker 1: back in time, rewind the clock and just let evolution
Speaker 1: run out in a different way. If other types of
Speaker 1: animals with the seeds of tool using intelligence could have
Speaker 1: independently developed their own technological civilization the way primates like
Speaker 1: us did. Yeah, what sort of world would it be
Speaker 1: if it was a world of corvid technology? Raven world?
Speaker 1: But so, yeah, we know now that corvids like ravens
Speaker 1: use tools. And this more recent study showed that once
Speaker 1: ravens had learned that they could use a particular tool
Speaker 1: to open a box and get a piece of dog kibble,
Speaker 1: which they absolutely love, they would choose if they could
Speaker 1: to grab that particular box opening tool and keep it
Speaker 1: on hand when the food box was not even present,
Speaker 1: so that they could use it to open the box
Speaker 1: later whenever it was presented to them, maybe you know,
Speaker 1: minutes or hours later. So that's already interesting. Like the
Speaker 1: bird is is recognizing, Okay, I can use this tool
Speaker 1: to get food. I'm going to hang onto the tool
Speaker 1: even though I can't use it right now. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: thinking ahead. Also, the same researchers demonstrated evidence that ravens,
Speaker 1: on average have a pretty strong ability to delay gratification
Speaker 1: to get better rewards, like as demonstrated in humans with
Speaker 1: the marshmallow test. Yeah, yeah, so of course the classic
Speaker 1: marshmallow tests. Why am I getting a tickle that that
Speaker 1: somehow people have questioned the setting of that test. Now,
Speaker 1: they've certainly been a legacy of reproducing the test and
Speaker 1: altering the Yeah, different versions of the test. Well maybe
Speaker 1: I don't remember what that is off the top of
Speaker 1: my head. Maybe we can revisit that in the future.
Speaker 1: The basic ideas like, you know, if you cannot eat
Speaker 1: this marshmallow for five minutes, you'll get three marshmallows or something.
Speaker 1: Um and and they do a version of that kind
Speaker 1: of thing with different animals to test their abilities. By
Speaker 1: and large, animals are terrible at this, just hopeless. You know,
Speaker 1: they live in the moment, They have impulses immediately if
Speaker 1: a piece of food is in front of them, they're
Speaker 1: gonna eat it. But in this uh, this current group.
Speaker 1: What the study found is that when you give the
Speaker 1: ravens a choice between okay, you can grab an okay
Speaker 1: piece of food right now, or you can grab a
Speaker 1: tool or a bartering token that the ravens have learned
Speaker 1: can be used to access a better, more delicious piece
Speaker 1: of food. Later. One of these experiments showed that ravens
Speaker 1: will pick the delayed path to better food more than
Speaker 1: seventy percent of the time to be exactive, with seventy
Speaker 1: three percent of the time they'd get the tool or
Speaker 1: the bartering token I knew would lead to the better
Speaker 1: delicious piece of kibble. And in these experiments the intelligence
Speaker 1: of the ravens in question was even sometimes an impediment
Speaker 1: to controlling the experiment, because, for example, I was reading
Speaker 1: a Motherboard article about their research where they talked about
Speaker 1: how there was one raven that started building his own
Speaker 1: tools to defeat the box uh and so instead of
Speaker 1: using the tool they were supplying to the raven, it
Speaker 1: was like, I can I can get around this, and
Speaker 1: so it was like putting together sticks in an arrangement
Speaker 1: there where it could trigger and open the box without
Speaker 1: the tool they supplied it. And also that one raven
Speaker 1: apparently started trying to teach the other ravens how to
Speaker 1: exploit the box, and neurologically speaking, it's been shown for example,
Speaker 1: in a paper in P and A. S by Alkawitz
Speaker 1: at all that birds like corvids and some parrots have
Speaker 1: an enormous number of neurons packed into the four brain areas.
Speaker 1: Uh quote. Large parrots and corvids have the same or
Speaker 1: greater four brain neur on counts as monkeys with much
Speaker 1: larger brains. Avian brains thus have the potential to provide
Speaker 1: much higher cognitive power per unit mass than do mammalian brains.
Speaker 1: So you know, mammals primates like us, we've got bigger
Speaker 1: brains than birds do. But it seems like birds are
Speaker 1: really packing in the neuron connections in there to make
Speaker 1: make more with less matter. But they're also really startling
Speaker 1: examples of social intelligence in corvid's like ravens like there's
Speaker 1: stories of how bird trainers who have close relationships with
Speaker 1: pet ravens can train these ravens to follow and fly
Speaker 1: ahead of them. There's even videos watching before we came
Speaker 1: in here of a BBC Earth segment where they had
Speaker 1: a raven trainer who had a relationship, a previous existing
Speaker 1: relationship with this raven that he trained for a long time,
Speaker 1: and this guy's riding along on the side of a
Speaker 1: fast moving truck with the raven just like flying along,
Speaker 1: chasing after him, trying to land on his arm. So
Speaker 1: I mean that kind of activity, like the raven chasing
Speaker 1: after him makes me think, Okay, I see its potential
Speaker 1: possibility for like a delivery system involving ravens doesn't seem
Speaker 1: entirely out of the question. You know, I'm just remembering
Speaker 1: when we did this earlier episode on bird intelligence. One
Speaker 1: of the things we did was I interviewed one of
Speaker 1: the researchers who had worked on a paper that we
Speaker 1: talked about in that episode on on bird intelligence. Uh,
Speaker 1: the researcher owner Gunterqune. And you know, I was asking
Speaker 1: him about the differences in cognitive ability between different bird species,
Speaker 1: and basically the question of like, have we underestimated all
Speaker 1: birds or is it like just basically corvids and parrots
Speaker 1: that are smarter than we thought. And he was pretty
Speaker 1: generous in his estimate of all birds though, of course
Speaker 1: corvids and parrots. He said, you know, essentially there's no
Speaker 1: major cognitive difference between what they can do and what
Speaker 1: primates can do. Uh. So you know, he's putting them
Speaker 1: like way up there on the cognitive ladder like that
Speaker 1: are much smarter than we realized for a long time.
Speaker 1: But even birds like pigeons and chickens, he put more
Speaker 1: on the level of like mice and rats, which you know,
Speaker 1: I think the average person would probably assume that mice
Speaker 1: are a lot smarter than pigeons, that that's not necessarily true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the idea that a chicken is up there
Speaker 1: as well, I mean, checkmate Verner Herzog, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Who I believe what he was Herzog had said, that's
Speaker 1: something about their being just this like the overwhelming immensity
Speaker 1: of stupidity and guys looking back at you from a
Speaker 1: chicken chicken. I think what he's seeing there is not stupidity.
Speaker 1: He's seeing like profound ancient magic. That chicken is a dinosaur.
Speaker 1: I mean birds are again dinosaurs. They're the Avian dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: They're the dinosaurs that are left. And he is seeing
Speaker 1: a lineage going back tens of millions of years all
Speaker 1: the way to the JUNGI sorry, some deep cuts on
Speaker 1: Herzogs here, but I can't go too deep. Uh. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I think it is fair to say that ravens are
Speaker 1: much more strikingly intelligent than pigeons, but also that pigeons
Speaker 1: are probably more intelligent than people usually give them credit for. Um.
Speaker 1: One interesting and funny Game of Thrones parallel I came across.
Speaker 1: There's a scene in the in the Song of Ice
Speaker 1: and Fire books where you know, the three eyed crow
Speaker 1: in the books, he's called the three eyed crow in
Speaker 1: the books and three ad Raven in the show. The
Speaker 1: guy played by Max von Sdlo in the books, he
Speaker 1: you know, he's talking to young brand Stark, which another
Speaker 1: side note I just found out the other day that
Speaker 1: brand in Welsh I believe means raven or means But
Speaker 1: he's speaking to the character brand Stark, and he says,
Speaker 1: it was the singers who taught the first men to
Speaker 1: send messages by raven. But in those days the birds
Speaker 1: would speak the words the trees remember, but men forget,
Speaker 1: and so now they write the messages on parchment and
Speaker 1: tie them around the feets of the birds who have
Speaker 1: never shared their skin. So I think this is different
Speaker 1: because he's talking about war, gang and magical stuff. It's
Speaker 1: in the books, but he's saying it used to be
Speaker 1: that you'd like tell the message to the raven, and
Speaker 1: the raven would go carry the message, and when it
Speaker 1: got there, it didn't let you didn't have to take
Speaker 1: a tag of parchment off its leg. It would just
Speaker 1: tell you the message. And this actually does have some
Speaker 1: basis in reality, because ravens, much like parrots, can be
Speaker 1: trained to mimic human sounds, like talking even better than
Speaker 1: parrots in some cases. And if you don't believe me,
Speaker 1: look it up. There are videos of this online talking ravens.
Speaker 1: It's creepy. No, it's not creepy, it's gorgeous. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: that that's amazing because I would have just have assumed
Speaker 1: assumed that you know, this is just a purely magical
Speaker 1: wrinkle in the world building here. But yeah, the idea
Speaker 1: that you could you can on some level train a
Speaker 1: raven to mimic human language, that's that's incredible, I think,
Speaker 1: especially if you bred them for it, like the best,
Speaker 1: the best ones best at mimicking human language and talking.
Speaker 1: You bred them for repeating phrases, and you train them
Speaker 1: individually in their lives. I don't know. I think it's
Speaker 1: not out of the question, but I don't know of
Speaker 1: any cases in the real world where there have been
Speaker 1: like breeding programs to try to bring out like the
Speaker 1: best talking ravens or even I mean, I didn't even
Speaker 1: know to what extent that's been done with with parrots
Speaker 1: A I wonder. Uh. Anyway, a few other things of notes.
Speaker 1: So I was reading about the University of Vienna biologist
Speaker 1: Matthias Claudio Loretto speaking to the writer Ella Davies for
Speaker 1: The Guardian in seen on the question of ravens as messengers.
Speaker 1: So they're directly addressing this question from the Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones show. And so Loretto is a researcher who works
Speaker 1: with ravens, and he said the following. So he said,
Speaker 1: they're good flyers, maybe not well suited to quickly crossing
Speaker 1: long distances. Uh, some bird species are already biologically adapted
Speaker 1: to rapid long distance migrations. Ravens are not one of them. Basically,
Speaker 1: everywhere except in the Arctic, ravens are quote non migratory
Speaker 1: and move rather opportunistically. That said, they can sometimes fly
Speaker 1: across moderately long distances. And now I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: back to my my maps of wester Ros and exactly
Speaker 1: what sort of distances we're talking about between say, the
Speaker 1: Wall and winter Fell. I think it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: pretty far. I think I remember off the top of
Speaker 1: my head that the wester ros is supposed to be
Speaker 1: roughly the size of the continent of South America. But
Speaker 1: to mention specifics about ravens traveling abilities that that that
Speaker 1: research I just mentioned. Loretto and a couple of other
Speaker 1: researchers published a studying current zoology in two sixteen that
Speaker 1: GPS tagged ravens to track their natural movements out in
Speaker 1: the wild, and they found a maximum movement range for
Speaker 1: one day of of about a hundred and sixty kilometers.
Speaker 1: That was the maximum, but this was not common, and
Speaker 1: it's way less than the daily traveling distance of say
Speaker 1: a car, you know, and a lot of ravens. Mostly
Speaker 1: what they did, the researchers discovered was they hung around
Speaker 1: quote anthropogenic food sources. That's not surprising, you know, like
Speaker 1: the bodies of the dead that have been put up
Speaker 1: on pikes by some victorious army. That absolutely would be
Speaker 1: an anthropogenic food source. I imagine this is more likely
Speaker 1: kind of a pizza rat scen area. Okay, But in
Speaker 1: terms of how fast they travel, they could be found
Speaker 1: traveling at speeds of up to forty per hour about
Speaker 1: twenty five miles per hour UM. So let's see how
Speaker 1: this matches up against the Masta Raymond quote I read
Speaker 1: earlier about why ravens are better than pigeons at at
Speaker 1: delivering messages. So compared to the pigeon, Mast Raymond says,
Speaker 1: a raven is a stronger flyer, larger, bolder, far more clever,
Speaker 1: and better better able to defend itself against hawks. So
Speaker 1: when he says that a raven is a stronger flyer
Speaker 1: than the pigeon, it's hard to know exactly what he
Speaker 1: means there. It would depend on what stronger means, But
Speaker 1: in general I don't think that's true. If it means faster,
Speaker 1: that seems to be a no. Because the ravens normal
Speaker 1: top range of traveling speed looks like it's about forty
Speaker 1: kilometers an hour. As we saw earlier. You mentioned the
Speaker 1: pigeon flies more than double that speed and generally flies
Speaker 1: a lot farther. Now, if he means by stronger he
Speaker 1: means like more acrobatic, that could be true. Ravens do
Speaker 1: have some kind of they got some good moves like
Speaker 1: and you can if you watch raven flight and slow motion,
Speaker 1: it can be very cool because they'll do like flips
Speaker 1: and twists and flapside down and all kind of strange stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: in addition to the speed and distance of travel, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen any indication that ravens have the same kind
Speaker 1: of long range navigational abilities that pigeons do. They obviously
Speaker 1: have some kind of navigational abilities, but I've not seen
Speaker 1: evidence that there's has been shown to be of the
Speaker 1: same power as that of the homing pigeon. So the
Speaker 1: whole ability to find their way back home from great distance,
Speaker 1: that that may be more unique to the pigeon. Now,
Speaker 1: the part where he says it's more clever, that's absolutely true,
Speaker 1: undoubtedly more clever. But does that matter much in delivering messages?
Speaker 1: I don't know how clever does it have to be
Speaker 1: to just get something from one place to another, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, if they're not actively engaging in spycraft, if
Speaker 1: they're just taking a message and delivering it without getting
Speaker 1: snatched up by a hawk from one fortress to another, Yeah,
Speaker 1: how what do you need? I will come back to
Speaker 1: something you just mentioned there though, another thing. The raven
Speaker 1: is generally larger, that is what what mace to Raymond says.
Speaker 1: That is certainly true, but does this matter if it's
Speaker 1: just delivering a small message written on a piece of paper.
Speaker 1: I mean it might be able to carry a heavier
Speaker 1: load if it needed to deliver something big. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're smuggling milk of the poppy around, I guess
Speaker 1: come in hand you. But yes, yea for just a message,
Speaker 1: what's that can matter? Yeah, he says it's bolder. I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what that means, but I think that's
Speaker 1: probably true if it means like more aggressive, more likely
Speaker 1: to approach unfamiliar objects, execute its training. You know, ravens
Speaker 1: are I think it fits that they are smart and
Speaker 1: bold and they'll do what they need to do. When
Speaker 1: it comes to being better at defending itself against hawks
Speaker 1: and other predators. I assume ravens are large. They have
Speaker 1: very few natural predators, mainly just humans and some of
Speaker 1: the larger predatory birds, sometimes including hawks. Uh So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that probably is right. They are better able
Speaker 1: to defend themselves. So I think, based on what I've read,
Speaker 1: I want to say that while pigeons are generally preferred,
Speaker 1: and it seems like they naturally, especially when they've been
Speaker 1: bred this way, fly farther and faster, with a message.
Speaker 1: I don't see any reason why ravens couldn't in principle
Speaker 1: be trained to become messenger birds, especially if they're bred
Speaker 1: for that purpose over many years like the pigeons have been.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's another thing to consider the domestication program here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: again we have to look at the the longstanding traditions
Speaker 1: that have enabled the carrier pigeon uh to to be
Speaker 1: the species of choice for delivering small slopes of paper. Right.
Speaker 1: But then again, while it may be the case that
Speaker 1: pigeons are more suited for long range delivery for multiple reasons,
Speaker 1: ravens might be more useful on other kinds of long
Speaker 1: range jobs. I would say, for example, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to train an animal to actively do spying or reconnaissance
Speaker 1: of some kind, like, I could imagine that you might
Speaker 1: be able to train ravens to go into an enemy
Speaker 1: encampment and recover certain kinds of objects and bring them
Speaker 1: home to you. Uh, probably better than you could train
Speaker 1: a pigeon to do something like that. Like if you
Speaker 1: were to train or raven like basically, the raven new
Speaker 1: that if it found a flash drive, yes, it could
Speaker 1: return that and get a special treat yes, and then
Speaker 1: you would just you know, receive flash drives and hopefully
Speaker 1: they would have something of interest on them. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I think there are some reports that throughout history ravens
Speaker 1: have been rumored to have been considered for for like
Speaker 1: war surveillance and and sp nage purposes. I don't know
Speaker 1: to what extent they've ever been fully used, especially not
Speaker 1: to the extent that pigeons have been. But there's your
Speaker 1: movie set up, Raven, James Bond. Yeah. I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of examples of other messenger animals and fiction,
Speaker 1: and nothing was really coming to mind except for the idea.
Speaker 1: And I didn't read the book series. My wife had
Speaker 1: the books, but at least the television series The Magicians
Speaker 1: that Arizon Sci Fi. They have these talking rabbits that
Speaker 1: they'll share, these messenger rabbits, and they'll just sort of
Speaker 1: pop into existence on say, your table, and then they'll
Speaker 1: speak in this um this kind of like weird uh uh.
Speaker 1: I'm almost Gilbert Godfrey ish voice to deliver the message. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but nobody, that's not We're not even gonna consider the
Speaker 1: possibility of messenger rabbits here on this podcast. I think
Speaker 1: we should consider messenger Cicilians like underground amphibians, burrow through
Speaker 1: the earth until they get to their target and give
Speaker 1: you the message. And messenger worms it's dirty. It's dirty
Speaker 1: by the time it arrives. There's some significant slime. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I wonder if there are any other really fascinating treatments
Speaker 1: out there. I mean, ultimately, the bird a bird is
Speaker 1: going to give you the best bang for your buck, right,
Speaker 1: It's gonna be able to to fly, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: able to travel in a straight line, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: able to execute a fair amount of you know, reasonable
Speaker 1: like stealth and avoidance of threats. And they're smarter than
Speaker 1: we thought. Yeah, unless I don't know in West in
Speaker 1: water World, did they have like messenger fish that they used,
Speaker 1: even that wouldn't be as good as a messenger bird though, yeah,
Speaker 1: messenger rats, I don't know. Well, at any rate, if
Speaker 1: you're out here out there listening to this episode, perhaps
Speaker 1: you have encountered another messenger animal or another variety of
Speaker 1: messenger bird uh in fiction, and you'd like to share
Speaker 1: that with us. Likewise, a lot of people still raised.
Speaker 1: But I have a friend who who just picked up
Speaker 1: raising carrier pigeons. So perhaps some of you out there
Speaker 1: have some expertise with pigeons that you would like to share.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you have some expertise with with owls or ravens
Speaker 1: you would like to share you have some insight on, uh,
Speaker 1: the intellect of of the raven or the owl or
Speaker 1: the pigeon. Obviously we would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out more
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