Over time, carrying letters became difficult and people sought a faster and easier way to get the messages they wanted from one place to another. It was at this point that pigeons began to be trained, and then “host pigeons” appeared.
Well, have you ever wondered how these creatures could deliver the letters they were carrying to their destinations, despite traveling many kilometers?
More than 3,000 years ago, it turned out that pigeons have tremendous orientation and can consistently find their way back to their nests with accuracy.
pigeons; They are easy to catch, strong reproductive ability, generally docile and quite adaptable. Not long ago, rock pigeons in particular were selected and crossbred to bring about the concept of “host pigeons,” birds that can find their way home.
These rock pigeons were carefully and carefully trained, gradually removed from their nests, and then released to fly home and desired locations.
The first hypothesis about what is behind these abilities of rock pigeons is that they have strong “magnetic sensing” skills.
In other words, magneto-perception is the innate ability of these creatures to perceive and orient themselves based on magnetic fields in certain life forms. Apart from pigeons, this ability is found in varying amounts in many different bird species, but not in humans.
Thanks to this ability, pigeons can perform much more precisely in covering long distances in the direction of north and south rather than east and west, with the natural directions of the magnetic fields flowing between the North and South Pole.
According to a study conducted in the USA, homing pigeons used low-frequency sound waves emitted by almost everything to mentally map their environment and get to and from the requested destination.
This ability is due to their ability to hear at frequencies much lower than humans, down to about 0.1 Hertz. Such waves emanate from the Earth itself, actually from the oceans and also from the earth’s crust.
According to this theory, pigeons use these low-frequency infrasound waves to create acoustic maps of their environment and accurately find their destination even as they oscillate miles away from where they live.
This approach; It not only explains how the pigeons get where they want to reach perfectly, but also allows us to infer why they rarely get lost.
When strong winds, aircraft, and various other phenomena disrupt these sound waves, the birds are disoriented and can be swept off a wrong course.
Another view of pigeons’ ability to find their destination is related to the sense of smell of these creatures.
Researchers suggested that more than 50 years ago, homing pigeons were able to develop an “odor map” by sniffing air components from different wind directions.
These creatures mentally draw a regional map of what they smell, and thus they use this map like a compass to find their destination. However, what kind of odors the birds smell remains a mystery.
The homing pigeons, which have been known to be used for various purposes for many years, were the main news carrier of especially diplomacy and even military operations in the past.
This function made them known as war pigeons, and they were even used in World War II for carrying letters. Looking at historical points, Genghis Khan used homing pigeons to maintain communication with the far reaches of his empire, and these creatures played an important role in announcing important events such as the Olympics even in Ancient Greece.
Although we find it hard to believe that homing pigeons still exist despite the development of communication tools and communication networks, these animals continue to fulfill the task assigned to them in many parts of the world.
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