And finally I get to talk about pigeons, one of the most pitiful animals to exist, thanks to us.

Even though people tend to have some level of disdain for pigeons nowadays, ranging from seeing them as a nuisance to outright despising them, for the majority of human history pigeons were useful and important. We bred and domesticated pigeons over centuries to be used for sending messages, rewarding them with food and training them to live dependent on human care, then promptly started shooting them for sport or kicking at them in city streets when we no longer needed them.

These so-called “rats with wings” that we hate so much for infringing on our synthetic biomes of concrete have served us for a long time. Homing pigeons have been used at least as early as ancient Egypt, where frescos and other depictions of pigeons being released and returning have been found, and were used to announce the winners of the Olympics. By 1167 CE, the Crusades had spread the knowledge and use of homing pigeons and the first regular pigeon route was established between Baghdad and most major points in Syria at the command of Sultan Nur ad-Din.

Fast forward a few hundred years and you’ve got Paul Julius Reuter, later ennobled Baron von Reuter and founder of Reuters news agency, who used a fleet of about fifty carrier pigeons to send news and stock prices between Brussels, Belgium, and Aachen, Germany. In 1897 there was the Great Barrier Pigeongram Service; if you’re thinking that sounds awesome, you’re so right. The Service was the most likely the first ever regular airmail route, sending “pigeongrams” between Auckland, New Zealand, and Newton, Great Barrier Island. They also developed what is believed to be the first airmail stamps, triangular and prized by collectors today, as are the old postcards sent via pigeon post. It is unclear whether or not the Service was definitively the first in these regards because there were a couple competing pigeon post companies on the island that cropped up about the same time.

1990 pigeongram sent by Charles Werner. "Dear Mr. Winkelmann, Charlie Soborne has smashed his arm last night from the wrist to the elbow by a rifle bullet. His father says that the arm will have to be amputated at once so Ernest asked me to send you this i.e. send a steamer at once to the Barrier...also if possible a lawyer."

 

Perhaps most famously, carrier pigeons were very useful in wartime for sending urgent information to and from front lines; they were used extensively in WWI and still proved important during WWII. During the first World War, which saw the creation of the US Signal Pigeon Corps, many pigeons were decorated, most of them receiving the Dickin Medal, a British recognition of gallantry in war animals, and one particularly heroic pigeon, Cher Ami, receiving the French Croix de guerre.

Cher Ami’s story almost made me cry upon reading it: He was a particularly fast flyer among the 600 Army Signal Corps pigeons sent to France and his bravery saved the 77^th Division, known as the Lost Battalion, at the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. That day, the 77^th got split up from the rest of the American troops and were too far to radio to command to make their position known, so the Americans started bombing the area, believing it was only the Germans there. The 77^th tried sending word to command via pigeons, but the Germans shot all of them down until it was only Cher Ami, who got shot twice, fell to the ground, then somehow took off again and, despite having his message canister leg wounded so badly it was dangling from his body by mere tendons, successfully delivered the message, which read, “We are along the road parallel to 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven’s sake, stop it.” Cher Ami had to have his leg amputated, was permanently blinded, and eventually died from his wounds. Cher Ami successfully delivered twelve important messages during his service—more than most pigeons—and his little one-legged body is on display at the Smithsonian American History Exhibit.

During WWII, pigeons were a little more outdated but were vital on D-Day. The pivotal Invasion of Normandy had to be kept completely secret from the Germans, and as radio transmissions ran a risk of being intercepted and decoded, carrier pigeons aided in a lot of the communications that day. 

Even in the 21^st century pigeons have been used for post, specifically the India Police Pigeon Service, which unfortunately disbanded in 2002 due to the increasingly widespread use of the internet, but this past year an Indian police force in Odisha announced that they are keeping their flock of carrier pigeons in the case of extreme communication circumstances such as natural disaster. 

Since then, carrier pigeons seem to be used most notoriously for smuggling, bringing drugs and contraband like cell phones and SIM cards to prisons, which is such a criminal (*buh dum psh*) waste of their potential and downright disrespectful.

Carrier pigeons have done so much to advance society by way of keeping people in contact with each other. Communication is a basic human and societal necessity, and these guys have been helping us do so for thousands of years, sometimes in the scariest and most dire of situations.