Speaker 1: Mygggg. Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. You know, Joe and my household.
Speaker 1: We're slap dab in the middle of Harry Potter Maniah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: 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, though the Lego kits are
Speaker 1: pretty great, They're not a sponsor, but I'm just saying
Speaker 1: there there are a lot of fun The Hogwarts especially
Speaker 1: is quite quite a kit. Uh. But you know, he
Speaker 1: also has a stuffed owl, which he has of course
Speaker 1: named Hedwig after Harry Potters. 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 was so 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 it's sides
Speaker 1: beautiful 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, their 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 of tdv
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: messenger pigeons. Right. They that that the summer smart 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 effects,
Speaker 1: sometimes in the TV show, especially where like it seems
Speaker 1: like somebody will write a message, put it on a raven,
Speaker 1: send it off and they get results within like a
Speaker 1: day when it was supposed to travel a thousand miles.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure exactly how that happens. Yeah, things
Speaker 1: have to move a lot a lot faster in the
Speaker 1: TV series, right. I think this has led to a
Speaker 1: lot of memes where like ravens have jet packs on
Speaker 1: this well, and then they also have I believe there's
Speaker 1: an additional separate species, a white raven, that that used
Speaker 1: by the Citadel for particularly important messages. I don't recall that,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of detail in the books that
Speaker 1: didn't even stick. I think I've had a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of time with Game of Thrones to to
Speaker 1: forget many different details myself. But you know, I think
Speaker 1: all this works nicely in the books in the TV
Speaker 1: series because it puts an alternative of universe kind of
Speaker 1: spin on everything, right, Like in your world it's a agent,
Speaker 1: but in in uh, in wester Roast it is it
Speaker 1: is a raven. And then uh, you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like some of the other spins that they do,
Speaker 1: like like having this predominantly polytheistic version of medieval Western culture.
Speaker 1: Uh so this alternate of you know, vision of how
Speaker 1: bloodlines and genetics work. Though I do think they're interesting,
Speaker 1: not to turn this into it just a Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones episode. There's some interesting parallels between the religions in
Speaker 1: the Game of Thrones world and uh and the religions
Speaker 1: of Western Europe, Like so you originally have these pagan,
Speaker 1: polytheistic religions. But I know George R. Martin has commented
Speaker 1: that the Faith of the Seven in the books and
Speaker 1: the TV show is really an analogy for the Catholic Church,
Speaker 1: even because it has you know, even it is considers
Speaker 1: itself a monotheistic religion. It has a trinity, it has
Speaker 1: many saints and other figures, and and he just said, well,
Speaker 1: I just went ahead and made them all gods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he had. He did a great job of taking
Speaker 1: things that were familiar, tweaking them just a little bit
Speaker 1: to where they still felt familiar. Like you didn't have to,
Speaker 1: you know, take a running start at understanding the religious
Speaker 1: world of Game of Thrones, but it was a little
Speaker 1: bit different, just just just a little bit skewed in
Speaker 1: a way that made it to uh, you know, resonate
Speaker 1: a little more. Yeah and uh. And likewise, the ravens
Speaker 1: fit perfectly in this you know, this grim dark setting
Speaker 1: because the raven, of course, is a bird that's associated
Speaker 1: with with darkness and carnage, and so it makes sense
Speaker 1: that the characters would be using this bird to send
Speaker 1: their messages, as opposed to the peaceful dove or pigeons
Speaker 1: pecking bits of flesh from dead bodies on the battlefield.
Speaker 1: That's how the raven is often imagined. But the way
Speaker 1: the ravens are used in the book, as we've already
Speaker 1: alluded to, is actually very analogous to real life uses
Speaker 1: of messenger pigeons. That's right, messenger pigeons, carrier pigeons. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is an actual method that that we use and
Speaker 1: have used for thousands of years to deliver messages as
Speaker 1: us long distances. Um. And and it's it's not it's
Speaker 1: not really, It's not like a magically trained pet. It's
Speaker 1: more of an animal that will dependently, dependently return home
Speaker 1: after you transport it somewhere else and then let it free,
Speaker 1: which is a much less impressive trick, though still impressive. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean it would be pretty amazing if you could
Speaker 1: just like send one to another city on command and
Speaker 1: then it would come back. Right, It's like imagine doing
Speaker 1: it with say a guerrilla from the local Zooh. You're like,
Speaker 1: I want to send a message to the zoo where
Speaker 1: this guerrilla lives. Okay, well I'm gonna take one of
Speaker 1: its guerrillas with me when I visit another city. You know,
Speaker 1: that will give the guerrilla the message, Let the guerrilla loose,
Speaker 1: and the guerrilla will of course return home, thus delivering
Speaker 1: the message. So I guess that's where you get the idea.
Speaker 1: You may have heard the phrase a homing pigeon. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is returning home. So here we are. We're talking
Speaker 1: about pigeons, we're talking about owls, and we're talking about ravens.
Speaker 1: We figured, we we know that homing pigeons. This has
Speaker 1: been a subject that that numerous podcast have covered. I
Speaker 1: know Josh and Chuck covered homing pigeons a while back
Speaker 1: on their show. That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: and so we we wanted to to to discuss them,
Speaker 1: but we figured this might spice it up a bit
Speaker 1: to also discuss them in relation to the owls and
Speaker 1: the ravens. Of the world of Harry Potter and the
Speaker 1: world of wester Ros. And in doing so, we'll be
Speaker 1: able to highlight why the pigeon has worked so well
Speaker 1: for these purposes, and why we use the pigeon, and likewise,
Speaker 1: why we don't actually use ravens and owls. What is
Speaker 1: it about ravens and owls that that would make them
Speaker 1: ideal for this sort of work? And then also what
Speaker 1: you know prevents us from using them for this sort
Speaker 1: of work to begin with? Well, I say, let's go
Speaker 1: pigeon first. Yeah, let's go. It's so, let's hit reality
Speaker 1: and then we'll dip our toes into the fantasy a bit.
Speaker 1: So first of all, let's let's consider some of the
Speaker 1: you know, the the epic facts UH from the history
Speaker 1: of homing pigeons that I think UH should ground their
Speaker 1: use in a real world that feels as epic as
Speaker 1: anything from West Roash. So, so, first of all, it
Speaker 1: seems that pigeons were originally domesticated for food UH in
Speaker 1: the Middle East and in Europe, much in the same
Speaker 1: way that the jungle foul that we now call it
Speaker 1: chicken was originally domesticated in India and East Asia. So
Speaker 1: they were domesticated for their meat, for their eggs, which
Speaker 1: a pigeon has tiny eggs, but you can't eat them.
Speaker 1: The pigeon, uh is maybe not as robust as a
Speaker 1: modern uh, you know, hormonally enhanced chicken, but it's still
Speaker 1: is edible. I mean again, if you've read the Song
Speaker 1: of Ice and firebooks, one of the common menu items
Speaker 1: at feasts and stuff is roast squab or stuffed squab.
Speaker 1: 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 rock 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 Mooard, 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 good
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 it sounds rather this is Ultimately
Speaker 1: we're talking about very mundane use of the bird. Right,
Speaker 1: we're going to ease 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 about birds from the family Columbidae, which is doves
Speaker 1: and pigeons. Um. But you know, we can think to
Speaker 1: the roles of say, doves and Christian symbolism. Uh. And
Speaker 1: even as it's kind of a secular symbol of peace, right,
Speaker 1: releasing doves um. Uh, you know too, 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 just as
Speaker 1: 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 pigeon is ultimately what
Speaker 1: sets it up for use. Is the carrier bird um
Speaker 1: or earlier people domesticated them, live with them and picked
Speaker 1: up on their abilities, and really the only other bird
Speaker 1: they think. Think to the other words that have a
Speaker 1: legacy of domestication, and uh and and in each one
Speaker 1: we can try to imagine to what extent they could
Speaker 1: have actually been used to carry messages. I mean, you
Speaker 1: have the chicken. It's not gonna work. The duck, the
Speaker 1: goose though, that's the Yeah, the messenger chicken. That would
Speaker 1: be like a good cartoon. Well, okay, so the chickens
Speaker 1: out the duck and the goose. I couldn't find any
Speaker 1: real discussions of this, but I mean, they are migratory birds,
Speaker 1: so it's it's it sounds possible. But are they are
Speaker 1: they ever domesticated? I don't know. I guess they are
Speaker 1: sometimes well, yeah, I've seen them, you know, listed as
Speaker 1: as birds that we have domesticated in some cases likewise
Speaker 1: 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 ancient 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: Advice and Fire series, where say, if your castle is
Speaker 1: under siege and no person, no human messenger would likely
Speaker 1: get 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 the mid fifties.
Speaker 1: And that's going at full gallup. And that's like a
Speaker 1: world record for horse. Yeah, that's like a common that's
Speaker 1: like really going and uh and again, the chances of
Speaker 1: you being able to send a message by horse at
Speaker 1: top speed, at record speed in a straight line, like
Speaker 1: on this magical highway that you've built between Fortress A
Speaker 1: and Fortress B, it's just not It doesn't stack up
Speaker 1: against the power, the the the message delivering power of
Speaker 1: the pigeon. So to give everybody, you know, some more
Speaker 1: ideas about just the history the legacy of of carrier
Speaker 1: pigeon use I was looking at the Hallowed History of
Speaker 1: the Carrier Pigeon by Mary Bloom from the New York
Speaker 1: Times two thousand four, and so some of the high
Speaker 1: points of the author mentioned here, and I believe this
Speaker 1: is uncovering a museum exhibit about the carrier pigeon. But
Speaker 1: we have, like an addition to mythical uh stories of
Speaker 1: in Anna in her association with the with the pigeon
Speaker 1: or dove, you also have biblical accounts such as uh
Speaker 1: Noah releasing doves or pigeons. Yeah, it was to test
Speaker 1: whether the floodwaters of the Great Flood had abated. I
Speaker 1: think it's in Genesis chapter eight where uh Noah releases
Speaker 1: multiple doves or either the same dub multiple times or
Speaker 1: multiple doves to go out and see if it can
Speaker 1: land somewhere. At first, it goes out and it can't
Speaker 1: find anywhere to land, and it comes back to him.
Speaker 1: The second time it goes out and it brings back
Speaker 1: a branch, and that means the waters must have receded
Speaker 1: from somewhere. In the third time it goes out, it
Speaker 1: just stays gone and never returns. So if you love
Speaker 1: a dove, set it free. So the ancient Romans used
Speaker 1: pigeons for chariot races to tell owners how their entries
Speaker 1: had placed. Genghas Khan established pigeon relay points across Asia
Speaker 1: and much of eastern Europe. Charlemagne made pigeon raising the
Speaker 1: exclusive privilege of nobility Pigeons were used for mill terry
Speaker 1: communication well into World War One, when the Germans rolled
Speaker 1: out carrier carrier pigeons with cameras that were soon replaced
Speaker 1: by reconnaissance planes. By the end of the Under the war,
Speaker 1: France had mobilized thirty thousand pigeons and they they had
Speaker 1: declared that anyone impeding their flight could be sentenced to death.
Speaker 1: There's actually a famous story from World War One, I believe,
Speaker 1: about a group of Allied soldiers who had come under
Speaker 1: friendly fire from artillery and only managed to communicate to
Speaker 1: their allies that you know, like stopped shelling us by
Speaker 1: accident by the use of a carrier pigeons that saved
Speaker 1: many lives. Pigeons have been used to transport blood samples
Speaker 1: from remote regions regions of Britain and France. In eastern India,
Speaker 1: they were used for communication between remote police out outposts,
Speaker 1: and as of at least last year, at least one
Speaker 1: of these uh lines was still in use. The US
Speaker 1: has used pigeons to spot shipwrecks. Drug drug traffickers have
Speaker 1: used pigeons seemingly around the world. I was looking various
Speaker 1: stories about this, and you know, I was finding hits
Speaker 1: from North, South, and Central America as well as in
Speaker 1: the Middle East. You know, obviously you're not going to
Speaker 1: send like an entire brick of hashish up into the
Speaker 1: at a pigeon, But if you want to send a
Speaker 1: small amount of something like across the border or police area, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you take a pigeon from its home, attached
Speaker 1: the drugs to it, and then let it fly home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what some people have done. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is a fun account that my wife shared with me.
Speaker 1: She was remembering a West Virginia whitewater rafting place from
Speaker 1: sort of like the predigital photo age, and they used pigeons.
Speaker 1: So what they did is, um, you know, you're going
Speaker 1: on this whitewater rafting ride, right, and uh uh, nowadays
Speaker 1: we just take this for granted, right. You ride some
Speaker 1: sort of a ride like a roller coaster, and at
Speaker 1: the end they sell you a picture of yourself enjoying
Speaker 1: the ride, and of course now we do. It was
Speaker 1: just digital photography, but this particular white Water rapid place,
Speaker 1: the way they did it is they had a photographer
Speaker 1: with a long lens up on a hillside where they
Speaker 1: could get a good shot of the river. Uh, they
Speaker 1: would snap your picture as you were going down the river,
Speaker 1: and then they would take the film. They would attach
Speaker 1: you to the homing pigeon, send the pigeon like to
Speaker 1: the end of the river where the pickup is. They
Speaker 1: would develop the film, and then they would sell you
Speaker 1: the picture. Because you know this is a course of
Speaker 1: that's when you want to sell the picture. Right, you're
Speaker 1: just getting off the rafting rides. You're excited like, oh,
Speaker 1: that was awesome, I didn't die, it was great, and
Speaker 1: then there's the picture ready to go like magic, and
Speaker 1: you pay for it. Now, that probably wasn't even possible
Speaker 1: until like SELLULARI to acetate film. Right, try to attach
Speaker 1: it to Garat type plate to your pigeons. Work to
Speaker 1: understand that joke. Make sure you listen to our series
Speaker 1: of episodes on our other podcast, Invention, about the invention
Speaker 1: of photography. Those have been a lot of fun. If
Speaker 1: 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 I'd
Speaker 1: never thought about it before, but that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: And that metaphorical definition came about, I think in the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties and the mid late nineteenth century. All right,
Speaker 1: so why and how do pigeons carry out these impressive
Speaker 1: feats of speedy delivery. Yeah, why them? Why not some
Speaker 1: other bird? Why not ol? Why not owls? Why not ravens?
Speaker 1: Why not rats? Why not the you know, than the
Speaker 1: neighborhood house cat? And I think you might be able
Speaker 1: to answer this question two different ways that we could
Speaker 1: that we can get into more as the episode goes on.
Speaker 1: But one explanation might be rooted in the sort of
Speaker 1: innate tendencies or abilities of each of these animals, and
Speaker 1: another answer might 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, uh seemingly originally for food,
Speaker 1: and so that kind of like provided the groundwork for
Speaker 1: further domestic uses of the animal. Yes, but it is
Speaker 1: certainly true that pigeons have some very impressive qualities when
Speaker 1: it comes to navigation and long distance travel. Right, their
Speaker 1: navigational abilities are essentially twofold. So first of all, they
Speaker 1: have a company system and this tells them which direction
Speaker 1: they're headed in and the sun, the position of the
Speaker 1: Sun and the Earth's magnetic field make this possible. But
Speaker 1: then they also have a map system, which tells them
Speaker 1: where they are in relation to where they want to
Speaker 1: go now. And it's this ability that is a lot
Speaker 1: more controversial that we have sort of competing hypotheses uh,
Speaker 1: competing theories about how they're actually working. So it's not
Speaker 1: totally settled exactly all of the methods that pigeons have
Speaker 1: to navigate the way they do and find their way
Speaker 1: back home, right, there's still there's still research ongoing and
Speaker 1: as to what's going on and and complicating all of
Speaker 1: this is the release site bias. This is when birds
Speaker 1: go off in the wrong direction at release, leading investigators
Speaker 1: to ask, well, what's happening in these cases to disrupt
Speaker 1: their return? What can we learn about the functionality by
Speaker 1: looking at the disruption events? And so the basic theories
Speaker 1: for how the mapping system works are as follows. First,
Speaker 1: there's the smell theory. So odors carried on the wind
Speaker 1: allow the pigeons to map their way home, and studies
Speaker 1: have shown that the atmosphere does contain the necessary olfactory
Speaker 1: information UH, and pigeons have been observed to get disoriented
Speaker 1: when their sense of smell is impaired or when they
Speaker 1: don't have access to natural winds at their home nest.
Speaker 1: And then there's the Earth's magnetic field lines, So like
Speaker 1: there is a theory that there's some kind of inherent
Speaker 1: magneto reception in the birds right, as a Cordula VI
Speaker 1: Mora and Michael M. Walker pointed out in a two
Speaker 1: thousand nine studying the proceedings of the Royal Society b
Speaker 1: Biological Sciences, quote, pigeons may derive spatial information from the
Speaker 1: magnetic field at the release site that could be used
Speaker 1: to estimate their current position relative to their loft. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this sounds like it might especially help with like
Speaker 1: initial orientation towards their target destination. Absolutely and again working
Speaker 1: with that compass system. So these two things working together. Now,
Speaker 1: there is also a third um theory that I ran across,
Speaker 1: and this one's not as big as the other two,
Speaker 1: but to just get every everyone you know, an idea
Speaker 1: of some of the alternative ideas that are being explored here.
Speaker 1: Geophysicist John Hagstrom has this theory that they follow ultra
Speaker 1: low frequency sounds back towards their lofts and that that
Speaker 1: this is why certain areas can confuse them and throw
Speaker 1: them off. He argues that topographic disruptions and ultrasound account
Speaker 1: for why some pigeons are thrown off track in known
Speaker 1: disruption disruption zones such as in parts of upstate New York.
Speaker 1: That was the region that the UH that Hagstrom was
Speaker 1: actually looking at and conducting. You know, some experiments in
Speaker 1: UH and homing pigeons, they can hear sounds as low
Speaker 1: as point zero five hurts, So so they do have
Speaker 1: you know, 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 the
Speaker 1: given pigeon might use UH, you know, either the smell
Speaker 1: or the magnetic field UH mapping system. It might just
Speaker 1: depend on where their rays uh, you know, leaning on
Speaker 1: magnetic fields in some cases, smell on the others other areas,
Speaker 1: or perhaps leaning on ultrasound if that is in fact
Speaker 1: one of the methods at their disposal. Well, and that
Speaker 1: would sort of make sense given what we know about
Speaker 1: our senses that we use for navigation. I mean, it
Speaker 1: would depend on where you were that you were trying
Speaker 1: to find your way to right Like some places it
Speaker 1: might be good to listen for traffic or something if
Speaker 1: you don't know if you're like trying to get back
Speaker 1: 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 while
Speaker 1: and giving me a message to return to my house
Speaker 1: with to my house. Uh, And I would probably just
Speaker 1: die in the woods in those cases. 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 pigeons can do can do these feats that that
Speaker 1: humans would be completely lost to try and replicate. Do
Speaker 1: you think the pigeons internal uh, navigational computer is as
Speaker 1: annoying as the navigation app on most phones are, like
Speaker 1: 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 drop
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. Uh, but we want to take a
Speaker 1: quick break here. When we come back, we're gonna move
Speaker 1: on to the next animal. In this episode, we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss uh, the owls of Harry Potter, but more
Speaker 1: specifically the owls of the real world. Thank thank thank you.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're back, all right, Robert, give it to
Speaker 1: me straight. What are the what are the chances the
Speaker 1: fighting chances of a military force that wants to deliver
Speaker 1: messages between its ranks by the use of war owls. Well,
Speaker 1: it depends if we're talking about muggles or we're talking
Speaker 1: about members of the wizard in Community. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: real real world here. Well, just to take the pigeons
Speaker 1: of World War One replace them with owls. What happens, Um, Well,
Speaker 1: then the messages don't get delivered for starters, because I
Speaker 1: think ultimately an important part of this is the of course,
Speaker 1: the legacy of using the pigeons. But the question, the
Speaker 1: bigger question is what what if there had been no pigeons?
Speaker 1: What if for some reason early on people had gone
Speaker 1: the direction of the wizard In community in the Harry
Speaker 1: Potter novels and had said, let's use owls. Let's let's
Speaker 1: not focus on any other animals. Let's focus on this
Speaker 1: species or this species of owl. Can we use this
Speaker 1: animal to deliver our message just right? Whether rain or
Speaker 1: snow or dead of night? Will this owl deliver your
Speaker 1: message right? And I have to say, when we we
Speaker 1: set out to do this episode, my initial suspected answer
Speaker 1: was going to be no, they can't. And I suspected
Speaker 1: that the reason was going to be that owls are dumb,
Speaker 1: that owls are like really dumb because and this is
Speaker 1: this is like, this is pre research, but I've found
Speaker 1: that multiple bird shows that I go to, you know,
Speaker 1: bird shows or like wildlife rescue places, places where they have,
Speaker 1: say an owl that can't be rereleased into the wild
Speaker 1: because it has a damaged wing, and so it's used
Speaker 1: for educational purposes multiple times. Uh, the you know, the
Speaker 1: individual caring for the creatures has pointed out that, well,
Speaker 1: this owl is really dumb. It's just not a smart creature. Um,
Speaker 1: And so you know, we have their their limits on
Speaker 1: what we can expect from from it. That's strange. I
Speaker 1: tend to find that people who work directly with animals
Speaker 1: are tend to they tend to air on the side
Speaker 1: of overstating the animals intelligence. Well, and I don't mean
Speaker 1: to speak for every like wildlife rescue individual out there
Speaker 1: or bird show worker, etcetera. But you know, it stood
Speaker 1: out to me, and it probably stood out to me
Speaker 1: because there is this idea of the wise owl, you know, um,
Speaker 1: you 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: and 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: blowta 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, but kind
Speaker 1: of Wilford Brimley faced owl. It had some heavy brows
Speaker 1: and mustache from what I recall, but it also glowing eyes. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, there are a lot of different types
Speaker 1: of owls. There's something like two hundred species roughly. They're
Speaker 1: amazing creatures. And there's somewhere in the neighborhood of two
Speaker 1: hundred different species of owl. Um. By the way, possibly
Speaker 1: the largest owl ever to walk the earth the Cuban
Speaker 1: giant owl, which stood about three ft seven or one
Speaker 1: point one meters tall, and was either flightless or nearly flightless.
Speaker 1: A giant flightless owl. So what was it like a
Speaker 1: like a raptor that like run around along the ground
Speaker 1: and snatch up its prey. I believe so, yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, or could possibly have achieved, you know, very
Speaker 1: limited flight, much in the same way a chicken may fly.
Speaker 1: But but owls are are specialized killers. They're they're mostly
Speaker 1: solitary creatures. There's not a lot of social complexity to
Speaker 1: their brainload. Um, you know, it's it's it's more about
Speaker 1: the spotting uh and and perceiving prey and then stealthily
Speaker 1: swooping down on them and uh and uh and snatching
Speaker 1: them up. But h but I was, I was looking
Speaker 1: into this more and I found a book, uh titled
Speaker 1: The Science of Harry Potter from two thousand two by
Speaker 1: Roger high Field. And uh, it's it's a pretty cool
Speaker 1: book obviously, Um, you know it's it's been out for
Speaker 1: a few years. But um, so this would have only
Speaker 1: been like the earliest Terry Potter books, right, Not that
Speaker 1: the use of owls really, you know, change as much
Speaker 1: in the series. It's pretty stationary. Owls are just how
Speaker 1: you send messages. But the major reason he says that
Speaker 1: owls wouldn't be ideal for this sort of work is
Speaker 1: that most of them are rather set and terry, so
Speaker 1: 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 used
Speaker 1: was they have a small office, they have a small
Speaker 1: work area, and you want to get out of that
Speaker 1: work area because there's like just a you know, it's
Speaker 1: like a pickpocket or robber is working like within like
Speaker 1: one street worth of area. And that's the similar case
Speaker 1: with a lot of predatory organisms. Uh. They ultimately have
Speaker 1: a small zone in which they operate. They operate very
Speaker 1: well in that zone, but you get out of that
Speaker 1: zone and you might be in the clear. Now, that
Speaker 1: might be a good point about the owls not being
Speaker 1: migratory and being fairly sedentary, But then again, I believe
Speaker 1: pigeons are non migratory or at least most in most
Speaker 1: cases non migratory, and yet they have this powerful homing
Speaker 1: and messaging ability. And then also in high Field does
Speaker 1: acknowledge that, well, you do have some owls that are migratory,
Speaker 1: so you have I think two out of the five
Speaker 1: native UK owl species are migratory and nature and in
Speaker 1: theory could handle the ranges involved in most Potter World letters. Um.
Speaker 1: And they have great eyesight which would be useful as well.
Speaker 1: So we think of like the ways that these uh
Speaker 1: you know that that that have given messenger species would
Speaker 1: find the places that needs to go. Well, the owl
Speaker 1: has excellent eyesight, could be it would be very useful.
Speaker 1: Now as for their brain power, um, he's he pointed
Speaker 1: out that there had not been a lot of systematic
Speaker 1: study of owl brain power, but this would have been
Speaker 1: too thus in two right, but he said, but he
Speaker 1: also acknowledged that, you know, there have been some some
Speaker 1: work in you know, looking at the memory of barn owls,
Speaker 1: specifically by Eric Knudsen at Stanford University, and that research
Speaker 1: seemed to show that they did have solid working memories. Um.
Speaker 1: While on the other hand, some owl species were considered
Speaker 1: to be quote rather dim due to their at the
Speaker 1: predatory niche that they depended on. Now, but of course
Speaker 1: in all of this anytime we're talking about animal intelligence,
Speaker 1: where it's always a bit unfair, right because ultimately a
Speaker 1: given species is as intelligent as it needs to be
Speaker 1: for what it does. And I mean, even given that caveat,
Speaker 1: I think we have learned a lot more about bird
Speaker 1: intelligence just in the past couple of decades than we
Speaker 1: knew before. Like, uh, it is becoming increasingly clear how
Speaker 1: smart corvids are, and we'll talk about that when we
Speaker 1: get to ravens in the next section. But we didn't
Speaker 1: always know everything we know now about bird intelligence. I
Speaker 1: think the picture is becoming clearer that the birds are
Speaker 1: much smarter than we have long thought, though not every
Speaker 1: bird is equally more intelligent than we have long thought, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it ultimately is a lot is going to
Speaker 1: depend on what that that particular bird, or in this case,
Speaker 1: what that owl does. UM. For instance, I was looking
Speaker 1: around at some UM some some other some actual studies
Speaker 1: on this UM two thousand thirteen study from the International
Speaker 1: Journal of Comparative Psychology found that the great gray owl
Speaker 1: or Stricts nebulosa, which that's one of my favorites. There.
Speaker 1: That's that's I mean, that's that sounds like a spell
Speaker 1: from Harry Potter. Um, these particular owls didn't do so
Speaker 1: hot in cognitive ability tests, they said to quote, our
Speaker 1: results suggest that the owl's failed to comprehend the physics
Speaker 1: underlying the object relationships involved in the task presented. But
Speaker 1: then again has pointed out in a two thousand four
Speaker 1: study published in Nature from Levy, Duncan and Levin's burrowing
Speaker 1: owls or Atheny cunicularia, which is another nice one. Uh,
Speaker 1: they used dung as a tool, or at least they
Speaker 1: use dung as bait to attract dung beetles, which are
Speaker 1: a favorite prey. But you could would that be a
Speaker 1: like novel or cognitively discovered behavior or is that more
Speaker 1: probably like an instinct? I don't know, but they they
Speaker 1: they were framing it in terms of, you know, this
Speaker 1: is a you know, potential tool use that is, you know,
Speaker 1: and granted any time your tool is dung used as bait,
Speaker 1: I mean it's not quite the same as using a uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a crafted twig uh to to pull grubs
Speaker 1: out of a out of a log or something. Just
Speaker 1: because it's dune doesn't mean it's not a tool, right Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean it still works for him. So I mean,
Speaker 1: ultimately high Field had argued that, well, maybe maybe the
Speaker 1: NOWL could be used for for such purposes, and I think, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, based on some of the other research we're
Speaker 1: looking at, it does seem like the NOWL could pull
Speaker 1: off some of the feats involved. Well. I think one
Speaker 1: of the big questions that you would need to ask
Speaker 1: about whether a bird could be trained as some kind
Speaker 1: of singer would be how well do they respond to
Speaker 1: training right and to domestic domestication. I mean, sadly, the
Speaker 1: popularity of the Harry Potter books and movies reportedly caused
Speaker 1: an increase in the trafficking of pet owls, which J. K.
Speaker 1: Rowling has is vocally condemned. By the way, do not
Speaker 1: go out and try and buy a pet owl just
Speaker 1: because you're like Harry Potter. Um. But one of the
Speaker 1: important cases here is that that outside of the magical
Speaker 1: world or the realm of professional wildlife rescue efforts, owls
Speaker 1: should not be kept in cages and they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're not going to deliver your mail for you. But
Speaker 1: but more to the point that, you know, handling pigeons
Speaker 1: is one thing. Stuffing them in and out of cages
Speaker 1: by hand is one thing, but an owl has some
Speaker 1: pretty vicious talents that can certainly send you to the hospital.
Speaker 1: So owls are just generally not good candidates for domestication
Speaker 1: right outside of a magical, um, you know, fantasy series. Uh,
Speaker 1: it 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 thank Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. We've talked about real world homing pigeons. We've
Speaker 1: talked about the owls of Harry Potter, and to what
Speaker 1: extent the owls of the real world could or could
Speaker 1: not match up to their to the sort of message
Speaker 1: delivering service that we see in the Harry Potter novels.
Speaker 1: They don't seem like great candidates and think, yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems like you're better sticking off, sticking with the pigeon
Speaker 1: unless you have the magic to make it possible. Uh.
Speaker 1: So let's turn now to Game of Thrones, to wester
Speaker 1: Roast and the use of ravens. Why are we not
Speaker 1: using ravens? And if we really wanted to, could we
Speaker 1: use ravens to deliver our messages? Uh? This one, I
Speaker 1: think the prospects are different, but maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: better than owl. So you mentioned in mythology earlier that,
Speaker 1: uh you talked about the doves of the Noah story
Speaker 1: in the Book of Genesis. You know, Noah releases doves
Speaker 1: and eventually they let him know that all the waters
Speaker 1: are gone from the earth. But don't forget there's another
Speaker 1: part of the story. This very strange doesn't necessarily really
Speaker 1: seem to add up to anything, but Noah actually sends
Speaker 1: out a raven. First. It's kind of hard to tell
Speaker 1: what the raven is supposed to be doing in the
Speaker 1: story when it starts off by saying, then it came
Speaker 1: about at the end of forty days, so it's been
Speaker 1: you know, forty days and forty nights of raining. At
Speaker 1: the end of forty days that Noah opened the window
Speaker 1: of the arc which he had made, and he sent
Speaker 1: out a raven and it flew here and there until
Speaker 1: the water was dried up from the earth, and then
Speaker 1: after that it just goes straight into the story with
Speaker 1: the doves. Uh So that's confusing. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 1: what's happening there. I do know that there is some
Speaker 1: uh there's some series about the version of the story
Speaker 1: of the Great Flood that we have that say that
Speaker 1: it's actually at least two different original stories that have
Speaker 1: essentially been edited together in the version that we have
Speaker 1: of the Book of Genesis. So it could this could
Speaker 1: reflect different versions of the same story just sort of
Speaker 1: being stitched together, but I don't know that. So, like
Speaker 1: one of them is the George R. Martin, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: and it was never finished, so they had to dislike
Speaker 1: slap it together with this other version of the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so some other author is like, I don't like the raven,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do doves, okay, But they also didn't want
Speaker 1: to throw anything away, so the ravens still there. But yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's one of those interesting little textual mysteries. Uh So,
Speaker 1: but yeah, the question would ravens be good messenger birds
Speaker 1: as in Game of Thrones? Now in the world of
Speaker 1: George R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire and the
Speaker 1: TV show Game of Thrones. The people of Westeros, they
Speaker 1: use ravens mainly to send long distance messages. Like we're
Speaker 1: talking about much very very comparable to the way people
Speaker 1: have used messenger pitch. There's a scene where Master Ahman,
Speaker 1: the master like the sort of uh learned person at
Speaker 1: the up at the wall, tells John Snow quote, doves
Speaker 1: and pigeons can also be trained to carry messages, though
Speaker 1: the raven is a stronger, flyer, larger, bolder, far more clever,
Speaker 1: better able to defend itself against hawks. So I think
Speaker 1: we should keep that in mind, and we'll come back
Speaker 1: to it later to see whether Master Raymond's mostly or
Speaker 1: not on the money. There. The first thing we should
Speaker 1: look at, of course, is whether in fact ravens are
Speaker 1: far more clever. And I think the answer to this
Speaker 1: is a resounding yes. Yeah. And this was I guess
Speaker 1: before we went into the research. My suspicion was they
Speaker 1: might be too clever like that that and and this
Speaker 1: may be you know, unfounded bias, but it was like,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe the owl is too dumb, maybe the raven
Speaker 1: is too smart. In the pigeon is just this perfect
Speaker 1: u uh, you know, a mix of skill and uh
Speaker 1: in vigational ability. But also it's not gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: get bored and curious on the way. I can totally
Speaker 1: see why you would think that, but I don't think
Speaker 1: that's what I would think after the research for this episode.
Speaker 1: I think that that sort of underestimates owls a bit,
Speaker 1: maybe overestimates pigeons and ravens and and the unruling nous
Speaker 1: of intelligence, because it is the case that for many
Speaker 1: very intelligent animals it doesn't necessarily manifest as like a
Speaker 1: surliness and rebellious nous. I mean, often very intelligent animals
Speaker 1: can respond well to training and conditioning, though often they
Speaker 1: respond in ways that are unpredictable to you, which is
Speaker 1: that's an interesting thing we'll get to in a minute
Speaker 1: about ravens. So ravens are corvids. They're a family of
Speaker 1: birds containing many other kinds such as crows, jays, and magpies.
Speaker 1: Both corvids in general and ravens in particular have, especially
Speaker 1: in recent years, but for a long time, been known
Speaker 1: to be extremely intelligent, and especially in recent years, we've
Speaker 1: gotten these studies that show the startling displays of intelligence
Speaker 1: and lab conditions. And there are tons of examples of this.
Speaker 1: If you want a whole episode focused on this subject,
Speaker 1: go back to the one we did a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago called the Unsettling Depths of Bird Intelligence. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a good one, and that we also talked
Speaker 1: a little mythology in that one. I remember Hoogan and Moon.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the Norse mythology that represents aspects of what
Speaker 1: Odin's memory, his thoughts and his memory. Uh yeah, And
Speaker 1: we also talked about it with Jason Ward when he
Speaker 1: came on the show to talk about the birds of
Speaker 1: the City. But yeah, they're just so many interesting stories
Speaker 1: about what corvid's and ravens in particular can do. Just
Speaker 1: one recent example I was reading about about the intelligence
Speaker 1: of ravens in particular came from a couple of researchers
Speaker 1: at Sweden's Lunda University named Can Kabadii and Matthias os Fath,
Speaker 1: who did a study where they showed really intelligent, interesting forethought,
Speaker 1: or at least what seems like evidence of it in ravens.
Speaker 1: So it's already been demonstrated many times that corvids, like
Speaker 1: crows and Ravens can use tools, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the hallmarks of complex intelligence, once thought to belong to
Speaker 1: primates alone. You know, if you go back and look
Speaker 1: at old textbooks, it's like only humans and the great
Speaker 1: apes can use tools. But nowadays corvids and certain occupy
Speaker 1: take issue with that. Oh yes, certainly. And one of
Speaker 1: the interesting things about this to me is that tool
Speaker 1: using suggests that if you go way back in time,
Speaker 1: rewind the clock and just let evolution run out in
Speaker 1: a different way, if other types of animals with the
Speaker 1: seeds of tool using intelligence could have independently developed their
Speaker 1: own technological civilization the way primates like us did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what sort of world would it be if it was
Speaker 1: a world of corvid technology? Raven world? But so, yeah,
Speaker 1: we know now that corvids like ravens use tools. And
Speaker 1: this more recent study showed that once ravens had learned
Speaker 1: that they could use a particular tool to open a
Speaker 1: box and get a piece of dog kibble, which they
Speaker 1: absolutely love, they would choose if they could to grab
Speaker 1: that particular box opening tool and keep it on hand
Speaker 1: when the food box was not even present, so they
Speaker 1: could use it to open the box later whenever it
Speaker 1: was presented to them, maybe you know, minutes or hours later.
Speaker 1: So that's already interesting. Like the bird is is recognizing, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can use this tool to get food. I'm going
Speaker 1: to hang onto the tool even though I can't use
Speaker 1: it right now. Yeah, they're thinking ahead. Also, the same
Speaker 1: researchers demonstrated evidence that ravens, on average have a pretty
Speaker 1: strong ability to delay gratification to get better rewards, like
Speaker 1: as demonstrated in humans with the marshmallow test. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so of course the classic marshmallow tests. Why am I
Speaker 1: getting a tickle that that? Somehow people have questioned the
Speaker 1: setting of that test. Now, there's certainly been a legacy
Speaker 1: of reproducing the test and altering the Yeah, different different
Speaker 1: versions of the test. Well maybe I don't remember what
Speaker 1: that is off the top of my head. Maybe we
Speaker 1: can revisit that in the future. But the basic ideas like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you cannot eat this marshmallow for five minutes,
Speaker 1: you'll get three marshmallows or something. Um And and they
Speaker 1: do a version of that kind of thing with different
Speaker 1: animals to test their abilities. By and large, animals are
Speaker 1: terrible at this, just hopeless, you know, they live in
Speaker 1: the moment. They have impulses immediately, if a piece of
Speaker 1: food is in front of them, they're gonna eat it.
Speaker 1: But in this UH, this current group, what the study
Speaker 1: found is that when you give the ravens a choice
Speaker 1: between okay, you can grab an okay piece of food
Speaker 1: right now, or you can grab a tool or a
Speaker 1: bartering token that the ravens have learned can be used
Speaker 1: to access a better, more delicious piece of food later.
Speaker 1: One of these experiments showed that ravens will pick the
Speaker 1: delayed path to better food more than seventy percent of
Speaker 1: the time, to be exactly with seventy three sin of
Speaker 1: the time they'd get the tool or the bartering token
Speaker 1: that they knew would lead to the better delicious piece
Speaker 1: of kibble. And in these experiments, the intelligence of the
Speaker 1: ravens in question was even sometimes an impediment to controlling
Speaker 1: the experiment, because, for example, I was reading a Motherboard
Speaker 1: article about their research where they talked about how there
Speaker 1: was one raven that started building his own tools to
Speaker 1: defeat the box UH, and so instead of using the
Speaker 1: tool they were supplying to the raven, it was like,
Speaker 1: I, I I can I can get around this, and so
Speaker 1: it was like putting together sticks in an arrangement there
Speaker 1: where it could trigger and open the box without the
Speaker 1: tool they supplied it. And also that one raven apparently
Speaker 1: started trying to teach the other ravens how to exploit
Speaker 1: the box. And neurologically speaking, it's been shown, for example,
Speaker 1: in a paper in P and A. S by Olkawitz
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 core it's have the same
Speaker 1: or greater four brain neuron 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: h examples of social intelligence in corvid's like ravens. Like
Speaker 1: there's stories about 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'd 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
Speaker 1: species and basically the question of like, have we underestimated
Speaker 1: all birds or is it like just basically corvids and
Speaker 1: parrots that are smarter than we thought. And he was
Speaker 1: pretty generous in his estimate of all birds, though of
Speaker 1: course corvids and parrots. He said, you know, essentially there's
Speaker 1: no major cognitive difference between what they can do and
Speaker 1: what primates can do. Uh so he's putting them like
Speaker 1: way up there on the cognitive ladder, like that they're
Speaker 1: much smarter than we realized for a long time. But
Speaker 1: even birds like pigeons and chickens, he put more on
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: it's something about their being just this like the overwhelming
Speaker 1: immensity of stupidity and looking back at you from I
Speaker 1: think what he's seeing there is not stupidity. He's seeing
Speaker 1: like profound ancient magic. That chicken is a dinosaur. I mean,
Speaker 1: birds are again dinosaurs. They're the avian dinosaurs. They're the
Speaker 1: dinosaurs that are left, and he is seeing a lineage
Speaker 1: going back tens of millions of years all the way
Speaker 1: to the Sorry, some deep cuts on Herzog interviews is here,
Speaker 1: but can't go too deep. Uh. But anyway, I think
Speaker 1: it is fair to say that ravens are much more
Speaker 1: strikingly intelligent than pigeons, but also that pigeons are probably
Speaker 1: 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 Sdo 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 aired their skin. So I think this is different
Speaker 1: because he's talking about warging and magical stuff that's in
Speaker 1: the books, but he's saying it used to be that
Speaker 1: you'd like tell the message to the raven, and the
Speaker 1: raven would go carry the message and when it got there,
Speaker 1: it didn't let you didn't have to take a tag
Speaker 1: of parchment off its leg. It would just tell you
Speaker 1: the message. And this actually does have some basis in reality,
Speaker 1: because ravens, much like parrots, can be trained to mimic
Speaker 1: human sounds, like talking even better than parrots in some cases.
Speaker 1: And if you don't believe me, look it up. There
Speaker 1: are videos of this online talking ravens. It's creepy. No,
Speaker 1: it's not creepy, it's gorgeous. Yeah, well that that's amazing
Speaker 1: because I would just have assumed assumed that, you know,
Speaker 1: this is just a purely magical wrinkle in the world
Speaker 1: building here. But yeah, the idea that you could you
Speaker 1: can on some level train a raven to mimic human language,
Speaker 1: that's that's incredible, I think, especially if you bred them
Speaker 1: for it, like the best, the best, the ones best
Speaker 1: at mimicking human language and talking. You bred them for
Speaker 1: repeating phrases, and you train them individually in their lives.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it's not out of the question,
Speaker 1: but I don't know of any cases in the real
Speaker 1: world where there have been like breeding programs to try
Speaker 1: to bring out like the best talking ravens or even
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't even know to what extent that's
Speaker 1: been done with with parrots. I wonder. Uh. Anyway, a
Speaker 1: few other things of notes. So I was reading about
Speaker 1: the University of Vienna biologist Matthias Claudio Loretto speaking to
Speaker 1: the writer Ella Davies for The Guardian in Seeen on
Speaker 1: the question of ravens as messengers. So they're directly addressing
Speaker 1: this question from the Game of Thrones show. And so
Speaker 1: Loretto is a researcher who works with ravens, and he
Speaker 1: said the following. So he said, they're good flyers, maybe
Speaker 1: not well suited to quickly crossing long distances. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: bird species are already biologically adapted to rapid long distance migrations.
Speaker 1: Ravens are not one of them. Basically, everywhere except in
Speaker 1: the Arctic, ravens are quote non migratory and move rather opportunistically.
Speaker 1: That said, they can sometimes fly across moderately long distances.
Speaker 1: And now I'm trying to think back to my my
Speaker 1: maps of wester Ros and exactly what sort of distances
Speaker 1: we're talking about between say, the Wall and winter Fell.
Speaker 1: I think it's supposed to be pretty far. I think
Speaker 1: I remember off the top of my head that wester
Speaker 1: Ros is supposed to be roughly the size of the
Speaker 1: continent of South America. But to mention specifics about ravens
Speaker 1: traveling abilities, that that that research I just mentioned, Loretto
Speaker 1: and a couple of other researchers published studying Current Zoology
Speaker 1: in sixteen that GPS tagged ravens to track their natural
Speaker 1: movements out in the wild, and they found a maximum
Speaker 1: movement range for one day of of about a hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty kilometers. That was the maximum. But this was
Speaker 1: not common, and it's way less than the daily tra
Speaker 1: raveling distance of say a car, you know, and a
Speaker 1: lot of ravens. Mostly what they did, the researchers discovered
Speaker 1: was they hung around quote anthropogenic food sources. That's not surprising,
Speaker 1: you know, like the bodies of of the dead that
Speaker 1: have been put up on pikes by some victorious army.
Speaker 1: That absolutely would be an anthropogenic food source. I imagine
Speaker 1: this is more likely kind of a pizza rat scen area. Okay,
Speaker 1: But in terms of how fast they travel, they could
Speaker 1: be found traveling at speeds of up to forty per
Speaker 1: hour about twenty five miles per hour um. So let's
Speaker 1: see how this matches up against the Masta Raymond quote
Speaker 1: I read earlier about why ravens are better than pigeons
Speaker 1: at at delivering messages. So compared to the pigeon, Mast
Speaker 1: Raymond says, a raven is a stronger flyer, larger, bolder,
Speaker 1: far more clever, and better better able to defend itself
Speaker 1: against hawks. So when he says that a raven is
Speaker 1: a stronger flyer than the pigeon, it's hard to know
Speaker 1: exactly what he means there would I know what stronger means,
Speaker 1: but in general I don't think that's true. If it
Speaker 1: means faster, that seems to be a no. Because the
Speaker 1: ravens normal top range of traveling speed looks like it's
Speaker 1: about forty kilometers an hour, and as we saw earlier,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the pigeon flies more than double that speed
Speaker 1: and generally flies a lot farther. Now, if he means
Speaker 1: by stronger, he means like more acrobatic. That could be true.
Speaker 1: Ravens do have some kind of they got some good
Speaker 1: moves like and you can if you watch raven flight
Speaker 1: and slow motion, it can be very cool because they'll
Speaker 1: do like flips and twists and flapside down and all
Speaker 1: kind of strange stuff. Now, in addition to the speed
Speaker 1: and distance of travel, I haven't seen any indication that
Speaker 1: ravens have the same kind of long range navigational abilities
Speaker 1: that pigeons do. They obviously have some kind of navigational abilities,
Speaker 1: but I've not seen evidence that there's has been shown
Speaker 1: to be of the same power as that of the
Speaker 1: homing pigeon. So the whole ability to find their way
Speaker 1: back home from great distance, that that may be more
Speaker 1: uniqu to the pigeon. Now, the part where he says
Speaker 1: it's more clever, that's absolutely true. Undoubtedly more clever. But
Speaker 1: does that matter much in delivering messages? I don't know
Speaker 1: how clever does it have to be to just get
Speaker 1: something from one place to another, right, I mean, if
Speaker 1: they're not actively engaging in spycraft, if they're just taking
Speaker 1: a message and delivering it without getting snatched up by
Speaker 1: a hawk from one fortress to another. Yeah, how what
Speaker 1: do you need? I will come back to something you
Speaker 1: just mentioned there though another thing. The raven is generally larger,
Speaker 1: that is what what mace to. Raymond says, that is
Speaker 1: certainly true. But does this matter if it's just delivering
Speaker 1: a small message written on a piece of paper. I
Speaker 1: mean it might be able to carry a heavier load
Speaker 1: if it needed to deliver something big. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're smuggling milk of the poppy around, I guess come
Speaker 1: in handy. But yes, yeah, for just a message, what's
Speaker 1: that can matter? Yeah, he says, it's bolder. I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what that means, but I think that's probably
Speaker 1: true if it means like more aggressive, more likely to
Speaker 1: approach unfamili your 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 this E sees of choice for delivering small slopes
Speaker 1: of paper. Right. But then again, while it may be
Speaker 1: the case that pigeons are more suited for long range
Speaker 1: delivery for multiple reasons, ravens might be more useful on
Speaker 1: other kinds of long range jobs. I would say, for example,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to train an animal to actively do
Speaker 1: spying or reconnaissance of some kind, like, I could imagine
Speaker 1: that you might be able to train ravens to go
Speaker 1: into an enemy encampment and recover certain kinds of objects
Speaker 1: and bring them home to you. Uh, probably better than
Speaker 1: you could train a pigeon to do something like that,
Speaker 1: like if you were to train or raven. Like basically,
Speaker 1: the raven new that if it found a flash drive, yes,
Speaker 1: it could return that and get a special treat yes,
Speaker 1: and then you would just you know, receive flash drives
Speaker 1: and hopefully they would have something of of of interest
Speaker 1: on them. Yeah. And I think there are some reports
Speaker 1: that throughout history ravens have been rumored to have been
Speaker 1: considered for for like war surveillance and and espionage purposes.
Speaker 1: I don't know to what extent they've ever been fully used,
Speaker 1: especially not to the extent that pigeons have been. But
Speaker 1: there's your movie set up, Raven, James Bond. You know,
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of examples of other messenger
Speaker 1: animals and fiction, and nothing was really coming to mind
Speaker 1: except for the I did, And I didn't read the
Speaker 1: book series. My wife had the books, but at least
Speaker 1: the television series The Magicians that Arizon Sci Fi. They
Speaker 1: have these talking rabbits that they'll share, these Messenger rabbits,
Speaker 1: and they'll just sort of pop into existence on say
Speaker 1: your table, and then they'll speak in this um this
Speaker 1: kind of like weird. Uh uh I almost Gilbert Godfrey
Speaker 1: ish voice to deliver the message. Wow, yeah, but nobody,
Speaker 1: that's not We're not even gonna consider the possibility of
Speaker 1: messenger rabbits here on this podcast. I think we should
Speaker 1: consider messengers to say millions like underground amphibians that burrow
Speaker 1: through the earth until they get to their target and
Speaker 1: give you the message. And messengers 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. Uh, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be able to execute a fair amount of you know,
Speaker 1: reasonable like stealth and avoidance of threats. And they're smarter
Speaker 1: than we thought. Yeah, unless I don't know in West
Speaker 1: in water World, did they have like messenger fish that
Speaker 1: they used, even that wouldn't be as good as a
Speaker 1: messenger bird though, Yeah, messenger rats, I don't know well
Speaker 1: at any rate, if you're out here out there listening
Speaker 1: to this episode, perhaps you have encountered another messenger animal
Speaker 1: or another variety of messenger bird uh in fiction, and
Speaker 1: you'd like to share that with us. All. Likewise, a
Speaker 1: lot of people still raise I have a friend who
Speaker 1: who just picked up raising carrier pigeons. So perhaps some
Speaker 1: of you out there have some expertise with pigeons that
Speaker 1: you would like to share. Perhaps you have some expertise
Speaker 1: with with owls or ravens you would like to share
Speaker 1: you have some insight on uh the intellect of of
Speaker 1: the raven or the owl or the pigeon. Obviously we
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you want to check out more episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, head on over to stuff to Blow
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Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex
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